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CCPXRIGirr DEPOSIT 



STATE RIGHTS AND POLITICAL PARTIES 
IN NORTH CAROLINA— 1776-1861 



SERIES XXIV NOS. 7-8 

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES 

IN 

Historical and Political Science 

(Edited by H. B. Adams, 1882-1901) 

J. M. VINCENT 
J. H. HOLLANDER W. W. WILLOUGHBY 

life: Editors 



FATE RIGHTS AND POLITICAL PARTIES 
IN NORTH CAROLINA-1776-1861 



ta 



BY 

HENRY McGILBERT WAGSTAFF, Ph.D. 



PUBLISHED MONTHLY 

BALTIMORE 

THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS 
July- August, 1906 



"onoe'''>»oti 



JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES 

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SERIES XXIV NOS. 7-8 

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES 

IN 

Historical and Political Science 

(Edited by H. B. Adams, 1882-1901) 

J. M. VINCENT 

J. H. HOLLANDER W. W. WILLOUGHBY 

Editors 



STATE RIGHTS AND POLITICAL PARTIES 
IN NORTH CAROLINA-1776-1861 



BY 

HENRY McGILBERT WAGSTAFF, Ph.D. 



BALTIMORE 
THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS 

PUBLISHED MONTHLY 

July-August, 1906 



'h 







LIBRARY of CONGRESS 

Twft Copies Received 

NOV 19 1906 

Cepyrleht Entry 

cuss <^ XXC, No. 

/ 6~1 1 ^ L 

COPY B. 



Copyright 1906 by 
THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS 



Press of 

The New Era Printing Company 

Lancaster, Pa. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 
Independent North Carolina : Union. 

Parties Emerging from the Revolution 9 

Attitude of Parties toward the Articles of Confederation 14 

Spirit of Particularism IS 

Neglect of the Government' of the Confederation 15 

Call for the Annapolis Trade Convention 16 

The Philadelphia Constitutional Convention, 1787 17 

Composition of North Carolina's Delegation 17 

Fight for the Adoption of the Federal Constitution 21 

The Hillsboro Convention of 1788 : Results 26 

Willie Jones' Plan of Action 26 

Change of Sentiment Favorable to the Constitution, 1789 27 

Petitions for Second Convention 27 

Ratification Effected, November 16, 1789 3° 

Spirit of the Ratification 31 

CHAPTER n. 

A Half-Century Under the Constitution. 

The Attitude of North Carolina toward the New Government.. 32 

Adjustment to New Conditions 32 

Opposition to Hamilton's Financial Plans 33 

General Discontent over the Excise Laws 34 

Reaction toward Anti-Federalism 35 

Iredell and the Chisholm-Georgia Case 35 

Governor Wm. R. Davie and the Alien and Sedition Laws 37 

Attitude of North Carolina toward the Virginia-Kentucky Reso- 
lutions 37 

The Federalist Leaders 3^ 

The State Rights Party: Nathaniel Macon, Leader 39 

War of 1812 : North Carolina Pro-Administration 39 

Missouri Compromise in 1820 : Newspapers 4° 

Nathaniel Macon and Montfort Stokes 42 

Presidential Election of 1820: Sectional Parties in the State 44 

Parties in 1828 : the Tariff of Abominations 48 

The Attitude of North Carolina toward Nullification 5° 

CHAPTER III. 
Whig Supremacy: 1835-1850. 

State Rights Principles Preserved 60 

Difficulty of the Whig Position 69 

The Texas Question 7° 

Agreement of Whigs and Democrats 7° 

State Whig Leaders 72 

5 



6 Contents. [45o 

President Tyler and the Bank 73 

Attitude toward the War with Mexico 77 

Both North Carolina Parties Condemned the Wilmot Proviso.. 78 

CHAPTER IV. 

Slavery Agitation : 1850-1860. 

Slavery in the Territories 81 

Legislative Attitude in North Carolina 81 

Growth of Particularistic Tendencies 82 

Compromise Measures of 1850 83 

State Parties, 1850-1854 83 

Kansas-Nebraska Bill and its Effect on North Carolina Politics. 90 

Meeting of the Governors in Raleigh, 1856 93 

The Rise of the American or Know Nothing Party 94 

Presidential Election of 1856 94 

Dred Scott Decision 96 

Party Platforms, 1857 and 1858 98 

John W. Ellis and W. W. Holden 99 

John Brown's Raid : Public Opinion 104 

Hinton R. Helper's Impending Crisis 106 

Congressional Speakership Contest: Gilmer 107 

The Workingmen's Association 109 

Slavery Taxation in North Carolina no 

Struggle of Parties in i860 : Issues Local 1 1 1 

Presidential Election in i860 114 

Radicalism of the Democratic Leaders 116 

State Acquiescence in the Defeat of i860 118 

CHAPTER V. 

Secession. 

Newspaper Advice to the People 121 

Revival of the Old Whig Party 122 

Complexion of the North Carolina Legislature 123 

Governor Ellis' Message 123 

Action of the Legislature 124 

Editor Holden Ostracized by the Democrats 126 

Attitude toward South Carolina's Action of December 20, i860. 130 

First Convention Measure 132 

Excitement of January, 1861 132 

Result of the Convention Election of Feb. 28, 1861 135 

The Peace Conference : North Carolina's Delegation 137 

The Goldsboro Convention : Results 141 

Excitement after Fort Sumter 145 

Call for the Second Convention 149 

Secessionists and Revolutionists 150 

Secession, May 20, 1861 152 



PREFACE. 

This study was undertaken with the earnest desire to 
make some contribution, however sHght, to the history of 
the native state of the writer. The poHtical tendencies of 
North CaroHnians between the War of Independence and 
the War of Secession have been set forth with the clearness 
with which the writer has been able to discern them. It 
is hoped that the monograph will serve as one block in the 
edifice which some future historian will erect when neither 
memory nor tradition can warp the truth in the story of 
southern secession. 

A friend of the writer, Dr. John P. Hollis of South Caro- 
lina, now in the Bureau of Corporations, Washington, D. 
C, suggested the subject of the study. Grateful acknowl- 
edgment and thanks i are especially due to Associate Pro- 
fessor James Curtis Ballagh, of the Johns Hopkins Univer- 
sity, both for a careful and painstaking reading of the 
manuscript and for many helpful suggestions and criticisms. 
The kindly interest of Professor John Martin Vincent, Di- 
rector of the Department of History at the Johns Hopkins 
University, has been very helpful. Miss Mary Theresa 
Dallam of Baltimore kindly read the manuscript and aided 
in corrections. The writer wishes further to express his 
appreciation of the courtesy and unfailing patience with 
which Mr. Miles O. Sherrill, North Carolina State Li- 
brarian, placed the resources of the Library at his com- 
mand and added much to the pleasure of his work in 
Raleigh. 

H. M. Wagstaff. 
Baltimore, Maryland, 1906. 



STATE RIGHTS AND POLITICAL PARTIES IN 
NORTH CAROLINA: 1776-1861. 



CHAPTER I. 

First Years of Independence: Union. 

In April, 1775, the threatening aspect of the political sit- 
uation in the province of North Carolina caused Josiah 
Martin, the royal governor, to take refuge under the guns 
of a British man-of-war lying in the Cape Fear River. 
From this date North Carolina was for one year and a half 
without a constitution. Governmental authority was exer- 
cised during this period by a provincial council acting 
under the authority of a provincial congress which had 
convened soon after the governor's flight. At the call of 
the provincial council a second congress met in April, 1776.^ 
Together with its duty of providing ways and means for 
prosecuting the war, this body was expected to form a con- 
stitution. Though two parties were rapidly taking form 
among the patriots upon the subject of the constitution, 
public opinion was not yet clearly expressed in principles. 

Those who inclined toward a government of democratic 
type, with every department subject to the will of the people, 
gradually gathered into one camp under the leadership of 
Willie Jones. Others counseled conservatism in departing 
from old forms and wished the constitution to provide a gov- 
ernment further removed from popular impulse.- The con- 
servatives recognized Samuel Johnston as the chief exponent 
of their principles. The relative strength of these two parties 



* Journal of this congress is in N. C. Colonial Records, X, 164-220. 
^Cf. Jo. Seawall Jones, Defence of North Carolina, 276. 



lo State Rights in North Carolina. [454 

in the April congress is unknown, but neither was fully formed 
and ready for action. " Certain resolutions proposed as a 
foundation for a temporary civil constitution " were deferred 
from time to time^ without their contents being spread upon 
the journal. No action was had beyond this and the matter 
was left over for a future congress. But the members had 
been unanimous in voting to instruct the delegates of the 
colony in the Continental Congress to concur with the dele- 
gates of the other colonies in a declaration of independence.* 
Three months later the Philadelphia Declaration reached 
Halifax, then the seat of government in North Carolina, 
and w^as publicly read to a very large assembly of patriots 
gathered for the interesting ceremony.^ 

A third congress was now called to meet in November 
and form a constitution for the independent state. The 
election of delegates to this congress developed warm par- 
tisanship between the radical and conservative factions.® 
The latter were distanced by their opponents. Samuel John- 
ston, the most prominent conservative leader, was defeated 
in his county for a seat in the congress and attended only 
as a lobbyist. Willie Jones was chosen as borough member 
from Halifax, the seat of the congress ; each of the thirty- 
five counties sent up five delegates and nine boroughs sent 
one delegate each. 

The Halifax Congress organized on the twelfth of Novem- 
ber by the choice of Richard Caswell as president. Caswell 
was fresh from the scene of his victory" over the High- 
landers at Moore's Creek in the Cape Fear county and his 
popularity was attested by the unanimous vote he received 
for presiding ofiicer.^ On the second day a committee was 
appointed to draft a bill of rights and a constitution. 

'Journal, N. C. Colonial Records, X, 545, 547. 

Mbid., X. 512. 

"Jones, Defence of North Carolina, 269. 

« Ibid., 283. 

' The battle of Moore's Creek was fought in Feb., 1776, between 
the Revolutionary provincial forces under the command of Caswell 
and the Scotch Highlanders who had risen in favor of King George. 

* Journal of the Halifax Congress, N. C. Col. Rec, X, 916. 



455] First Years of Independence: Union. ii 

Willie Jones was on this committee as well as the second 
leading radical in the state, Thomas Person. Popularizing 
influences early manifested themselves in the congress, and a 
motion was passed^ that for the future all questions should 
be determined by voice instead of by counties and towns, as 
formerly. An oath of allegiance to the " independent state 
of North Carolina and to the Powers and Authorities which 
may be established for the good government thereof "^*^ was 
provided for enforcement upon citizens lukewarm to the 
revolution. The budding spirit of state nationalism had its 
expression in the appeal of the congress to the law of 
nations in its demand upon Massachusetts for the return 
of a North Carolina brig, laden with salt, wine, and Jesuits' 
bark from Cadiz, Spain, seized by a privateer out of Bos- 
ton. ^^. The work of constitution-making went on amid such 
characteristically democratic proceedings as : "On motion, 
ordered that sundry horses and a chariot, the property of 
the late Governor Martin, be sold for ready money on Mon- 
day next at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, in the town of Hali- 
fax, and that the proceeds of sale be paid into the Treasury 
of this Province. "^- 

The bill of rights brought forward by the committee 
consisted of twenty-five articles which enumerated the usual 
guarantees of English liberty, such as freedom of con- 
science, freedom of the press, trial by jury, etc., and declared 
the people the sole and exclusive source of government, 
enjoining a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles. 

It was in the constitutional document proper that the 
popular party purposed to enthrone democracy, yet the 
completed instrument indicated the extremely mild form 
of radicalism prevalent at that date. Many features indeed 
showed the evidences of compromise. Legislative author- 
ity was vested in a biennial assembly annually elected by 
the people under certain restrictions. The judicial and 

'Journal, N. C. Colonial Rec, X, 917. 
^"Journal, N. C. Colonial Rec, X, 920. 
'\ Ibid., 996. 
^" Ibid., 920. 



12 



State Rights in North Carolina. [456 



executive branches of the government were to an extent sub- 
ordinated to the legislative branch through the power given 
the assembly to elect both the governor and the judges of 
the various courts. Likewise nearly all other officers," 
including an attorney-general, treasurer, councillors of state, 
generals and field officers of the militia and of the regular 
army, were to be elected by the two houses.^* The theory 
was that through annual elections the assembly would be 
directly under the control of the people and would reflect 
their will, but the franchise was so hedged about that even 
this tempered concession to democracy was partially nega- 
tived. 

A state senator had to possess three hundred acres in 
fee. To vote for a senator a freehold qualification of fifty 
acres was necessary ; to vote for a commoner only the 
payment of public taxes was required.^^ Evidently there 
was small reason for Johnston's querulous complaint. " I 
am in great pain for the honor of the province," he wrote. 
" Every one who has the least pretensions to be a gentleman 
is suspected and borne down per ignohile vulgiis — a set of 
men without reading, experience or principle to govern 
them."^*' The constitution, though certainly not admirable 
in many respects, bore the impress of sincerity ; and though 
conservative according to present day standards, it satisfied 
the demands of the radical party of 1776. 

There was much need, however, for compromise between 
the two Whig factions, and stability in the government was 
essential to the success of the Revolutionary party. The 
internal strife with the Tories was perhaps more bitter in 
North Carolina than in any other of the American colonies. 

" N. C. Col. Rec, X, 1003. This bill of rights was declared a 
part of the constitution by the 44th Article of the later document. 

"The justices of the peace in the respective counties were like- 
wise to be classed by the assembly and commissioned by the gov- 
ernor (Art. 2>2>)- Though not provided in the constitution the 
county sheriffs were also elected by the assembly. 

" N. C. Constitution of 1776, sections VII and VIII, Col Rec, X, 
1006. 

"N. C. Col. Rec, X, 1041. Johnston to Jas. Iredell, Dec. 9, 1776. 



457] ^^''^^ Years of Independence: Union. 13 

There were two main causes for this besides the natural and 
usually wholesome difference of opinion upon political 
questions. First, the population of North Carolina, viewed 
as a whole, was composed of non-homogeneous groups. 
Second, a long period of pre-Revolutionary mismanagement 
had destroyed the faith of the frontier settlers in the wisdom 
and justice of the rule of the older, more populous, and 
wealthier seaboard. The overflow from the older' seaboard 
settlements made up a back-country population of hardy 
English stock which had been unable, up to the Revolu- 
tionary period, to induce the eastern or seaboard region to 
extend to them any share in the provincial government. 

The first result of this sectional divergence was the Regu- 
lators' War of 1 769-1 77 1, which grew directly out of op- 
pressive taxation and an unjust judicial system applied by 
the east to the back-country.^' In essence it was a rebellion 
of the new west against the old east and eastern misrule. 
The Regulators, who had assumed the administration of 
justice in the central and western counties according to 
their own ideas, were crushed by eastern bayonets under 
the command of the royal governor, William Tryon. Hence, 
when the Revolutionary War broke out it was the east 
rather than the English that many of the old Regulators 
were ready to fight. Their coalition with the great body of 
Highlanders in the Cape Fear region, who were monarch- 
ists by mental inheritance as well as by moral conviction, 
tore the embryo state asunder and gave a determined and 
bloody character to the civil strife carried on throughout 
the Revolutionary period. The fires of internecine warfare 
burned brightly in the middle counties^^ even while the tacit 
truce existed from 1781 to 1784 between the Continental and 
British forces at New York and Charleston. The battle of 
Moore's Creek in February, 1776, between the state Revo- 
lutionary troops and the combined forces of the High- 

"For a full treatment of the Regulators' War and its causes see 
Havwood, Tryon in North Carolina. Also a good sketch in 
Saunders' Introduction to Vol. VIII of N. C. Col. Records. 

^* Washington's Works, Washington to La Fayette, Jan. 2, 1782. 



14 State Rights in North Carolina. [458 

landers and the Regulators, had begun the discomfiture of 
the Loyalists in North Carolina, and the defeat of Ferguson 
at King's Mountain in 1780 had completed it.^'' 

The struggle between the Loyalists and the patriots was 
characterized by such personal bitterness that even after in- 
dependence of England was assured the memory of past suf- 
ferings and hatred could not be wiped out. The bitterness 
rather de'epened for a while against the defeated faction. 
The General Assembly in 1782 passed an act-** of wholesale 
confiscation of the property of a long list of Loyalists^ 
beginning with Governors Tryon and Martin and including 
all who were prominent as royal sympathizers. The treaty 
of peace between England and the United States in 1784 
was careful to provide for rights of return to all fugitive 
Loyalists and for a restitution of their property. But 
North Carolina was in no more conciliatory mood toward 
the defeated Tories in 1784 than in 1782. The victors were 
unwilling to give up the large amount of confiscated prop- 
erty.^^ The radicals, headed by Jones and now in a large 
majority, were too conscious of the state's individual sov- 
ereignty and too proud of its newly won independence to 
defer materially to the obligations incurred by the Congress 
of the loosely jointed Confederation. 

A few only were sufficiently imbued with ideas of inter- 
national honor to enable them to rise above factional hatred. 
These belonged mainly to the party of Johnston and repre- 
sented the conservative minority. Among them were John- 
ston, James Iredell, Alexander Maclaine, Wm. R. Davie and 
Wm. Hooper — each a man of political energy. They 
watched with jealous care the growth of their party senti- 
ment and deprecated the evident tendency of the radical 
majority to individualize the state and place its interests 
paramount to those of the Confederation. It was the con- 
servative party, therefore, which received with eagerness the 

" See Autobiography of Edmund Fanning, the notorious N. C. 
Tory leader. 

^Laws of North CaroHna, 1782, 418. 
^'McRee, II, 93, Iredell to Pierce Butler. 



459] First Years of Independence: Union. 1 5 

idea of a reform in the Articles of Confederation.-^ An- 
archy not only in international obligations but in finance 
and in justice, and a general failure to realize the blessings 
that independence seemed to promise had succeeded the 
treaty of peace. The conservatives in North Carolina fur- 
nished a full share of the sentiment which was growing 
strong throughout the country, and demanded a closer union 
of the states as a means of ending the confused condition 
into which they were falling. 

But with the majority in North Carolina the movement 
for creating an efficient union gathered force slowly. The 
party in power by no means despaired of the state or showed 
signs of a loss of faith in independent state democracy. 
Willie Jones was a personal friend of Thomas Jefferson and 
possessed even more democratic ideals than the Virginia 
leader. The fundamental key-note of Jones' position was 
an independent state democracy administered along fra- 
ternal lines and with just so much connection with the other 
states as to insure peace between them. This spirit of par- 
ticularism Jones carefully fostered in his party, the mem- 
bers of which, for a number of years, accepted his views 
as reenacted law. 

The general result of this state rights or particularistic 
spirit was an almost total lack of interest by the majority 
party in the affairs of the Confederation. State politics 
absorbed all its interests. Delegates were chosen to Con- 
gress but their seats were for the most part vacant. 
Throughout the year 1786 the chairman of Congress con- 
tinually urged upon Governor Caswell the importance of 
having the state represented,-" and the governor as contin- 
ually urged the representatives to go forward, but it was 
not until June of that year that the first North Carolina 
delegate arrived in New York. Three delegates arrived in 
that month but almost immediately sought to be relieved by 

=' Maclaine to Will Hooper, N. C. State Records, XVI, 944. 
""N. C. State Records, XVIII, 51S, 659, et. seq. 



1 6 State Rights in North Carolina. [460 

other delegates who had not yet attended at all.-* The idea 
prevailed that there should be rotation among the state 
delegates in the disagreeable task of attending Congress. 
In December, 1786, the state was again totally unrepre- 
sented. The lack of sufficient remuneration and the slow 
methods of transportation, as well as the general want of 
interest in Confederation affairs, increased the disinclination 
to serve in Congress. The salaries of the North Carolina 
delegates were sixty-four pounds each per month, paid by 
warrants on the state treasury in depreciated state paper 
currency. The depleted state of the treasury often rendered 
this difficult of collection.^^ But, despite the lack of interest 
manifested by North Carolina and by members of the other 
states, the American Confederation was now on the eve of 
a marvellous political change, a change the more wonderful 
in that it was not generally demanded by the thirteen inde- 
pendent sovereignties affected. 

In February, 1786, Governor Caswell received the reso- 
lutions of Virginia respecting the appointment of commis- 
sioners to meet at Annapolis the following September for 
the purpose of taking into consideration the trade of the 
United States and to report on some method of securing 
unity of action and harmony between their jangling inter- 
ests. The Assembly not being in session Governor Caswell, 
by the advice of his council, appointed five commissioners^^ 
to attend at the time, place, and for the purpose named. 
Caswell, who stood in politics midway between the radicals 
and the conservatives, showed an earnest desire that the 
appointees should attend and urged them to do so.^^ Only 
one of the number, however, Hugh Williamson, made an 
effort to be present. After some delay by weather and bad 
travel he reached Annapolis on the fourteenth of September, 
the day the Convention adjourned. 

^* Timothy Bloodworth to Gov. Caswell, Sept. 4, 1786, N. C. 
Records, XVIII, 724, and Chas. Johnston to Caswell, 773. 
'' N. C. Records, XVIII, 309. Report of Legislative Committee. 
;' N. C, State Records, XVIII, 650. 
" Ibid., XVIII, 682. Letters to the Commissioners. 



461] First Years of Independence: Union. 17 

Though not having effected its immediate purpose of reg- 
ulating interstate trade, the AnnapoHs Convention served 
a larger purpose in its recommendations to Congress to call 
a constitutional convention. Acting upon this recommen- 
dation, Congress, within the same month, invited the thirteen 
states to send delegates to Philadelphia in May, 1787, for 
the purpose of providing remedies for the weakness of the 
existing Union. 

The General Assembly of North Carolina on the eight- 
eenth of November responded by the appointment of a dele- 
gation of five. As named by the Assembly the delegation 
consisted of Willie Jones, Alexander Martin, Richard Dobbs 
Spaight, William R, Davie, and Governor Caswell. It was 
understood that three of these,-^ Jones, Martin, and Caswell, 
were state rights men. Spaight and Davie were avowedly 
favorable to the idea of greatly strengthening the federal 
government.^^ The preamble to the act^° of appointment, 
however, embodied the sentiments of the conservatives and 
seems to have been due to their exertions. Perhaps it was 
on this account as much as for his lack of sympathy with 
the proposal to strengthen the Union at the expense of the 
privileges of the states that Jones at once declined to serve 
on the delegation. The governor, so empowered by the act, 
filled the vacancy by the appointment of Hugh Williamson, 
and also appointed William Blount in his own stead.^^ 
Both Williamson and Blount classed as conservatives, hence 
the complexion of the delegation was entirely changed. 
Only one radical, ex-Governor Martin, remained among 
the whole number of five composing the commission. 

When the Constitutional Convention began regular ses- 
sions at Philadelphia on the twenty-fifth of May, 1787, with 
George Washington as president, only one of North Caro- 
lina's delegation, William R. Davie, had arrived. The re- 
maining members, however, appeared soon after organiza- 

=*McRee, II, 151. Iredell to Mrs. Iredell, Sept. 30, 1786. 
"-" Ibid., II, 168, Spaight to Iredell. 
'* Public Acts of N. C, 1786, 412. 
'' N. C. State Records, XX, 637, 683. 



1 8 State Rights in North Carolina. [462 

tion. Great unanimity prevailed among the five throughout 
the period of the Convention, and Martin acted with his col- 
leagues apparently without reference to party affiliation. 
The delegates seemed conscious of the importance of the 
crisis and its probable influence upon the destiny of Amer- 
ica. On the fourteenth of June the commission wrote^^ 
to Governor Caswell : "A very large field presents to our 
view, without a single straight or eligible road that has 
been trodden by the feet of nations. A union of Sovereign 
States, preserving their civil liberties and connected by such 
ties as to preserve permanent and effective Governments 
... is a circumstance that has not occurred in the history 
of man." The tone of this whole letter shows conclusively 
that no thought had ever occurred to the delegates that 
North Carolina would divest herself of sovereignty in the 
process of union with the other states. 

The injunction of secrecy laid by the Convention upon 
itself prevented members from keeping their states informed 
as to the progress of the Convention's labors. But a cor- 
respondence kept up between the North Carolina delegates 
and prominent men at home enabled the delegates to judge 
the temper of the state. Governor Caswell wrote, July 26, 
to Spaight : " From the hint you threw out in your first 
letter I am induced to think that the plan of a National Par- 
liament and Supreme Executive, with adequate powers to 
the Government of the Union, will be more suitable to our 
situation than any other ; but I should wish also an inde- 
pendent judicial department to decide any contest that may 
happen between the United States and individual states, 
and between one state and another."^^ Davie wrote James 
Iredell, the ablest advocate of North Carolina, to inquire 
as to how far the introduction of judicial powers, derived 
from Congress, would be politic and practicable in the 
state. ^* As we shall see later, the operation of a federal 

'' N. C. State Records, XX, 323. 

°' N. C. Records XX, 752. From Executive Letter-Book. 

°* McRee, Life and Correspondence of James Iredell, II, 161. 



463] First Years of Independence: Union. 19 

judiciary was the feature of the Constitution most dreaded 
by the people of North CaroHna. 

In the Convention North Carolina, as one of the largest 
states, naturally used her vote to preserve this advantage. 
Her delegation from the first demanded representation in 
proportion to population in both House and Senate, but 
finally agreed to equality in the latter on condition that 
money bills should originate in the former. When the 
question of the method of choosing Senators came up Davie 
insisted on their election by state legislatures.^^ He brought 
the remainder of the delegation to this view, and cast the 
vote of the state for that method in opposition to the plan, 
supported by Alassachusetts, Virginia, and South Carolina, 
of election by the House from nominations made by the 
state legislatures. In the discussions upon this topic Mr. 
Davie clearly indicated his views as to the nature of the 
government in process of formation.^^ It was, he said, y 
partly federal and partly national : " It ought in some re- 
spects to operate on the states, in others on the people." 
Alexander Martin said : " United America must have one 
general interest to be a nation, at the same time preserving 
the particular interests of the states. "^^ 

Naturally North Carolina's vote in each instance^^ was 
cast in support of the southern demand that at least three- 
fifths of the slaves should be included in the apportionment 
of Representatives in the House. In this connection Davie 
pointed out that North Carolina would never confederate 
on any terms that did not rate the blacks at three-fifths. 
" If the Eastern States meant, therefore," he said, " to ex- 
clude them altogether, the business was at an end."^® Wil- 

^ Madison Papers, Supplementary to Elliot's Debates on the 
Federal Constitution, V, 265. 

'" Ibid., V, 265, 281. 

" N. C. Records, XX, 753. Martin to Governor Caswell. With 
Martin, however, the political pendulum had swung so far away 
from particularism that events were soon to prove that he had lost 
the confidence of his party. 

"* Madison Papers, Supplementary to Elliot's Debates, V, 301, 471. 

^°Ibid., 303. 



20 State Rights hi North Carolina. [464 

liamson held the same view.*'' The North CaroHna dele- 
gation were lukewarm as to the continuation of the slave- 
trade but voted with South Carolina and Georgia, appar- 
ently*^ from a fear that these states would reject the Con- 
stitution if the trade was abolished at once. 

In the apportionment of Representatives in the lower 
branch of Congress the Convention allotted only five mem- 
bers to North Carolina. This number just equalled one- 
thirteenth of the whole number to compose the first Con- 
gress. The state's share of the debt of the Confederation 
had in no year been rated as high as one-thirteenth of the 
total ; therefore, lest a present increase in the apportioned 
number of Representatives should mean also a corresponding 
increase in the state's share of the common debt, the dele- 
gates from North Carolina contented themselves with the 
number assigned until the new apportionment.*- In 1790 a 
general census was to be taken, and thereafter 30,000 of 
population, including three-fifths of the slaves, should be 
the unit of representation. 

When the Convention finished its labors at Philadelphia 
three members only signed the Constitution for North Caro- 
lina, one*^ of these doing so with the expressed reservation 
that the action did not bind him to the support of the instru- 
ment in his own state. Dissension had broken out afresh 
among the delegates from the various states at the very last 
moment. Many expressed themselves as dissatisfied with 
the final result. Davie and Martin had returned home to 
meet business engagements just before the Constitution 
came from the committee in completed form, but Davie 
would certainly have signed and Martin very probably. 

While the report of the Philadelphia Convention was 
still in the hands of Congress, North Carolina held her an- 
nual election for members of the General Assembly. It was 

*" Madison Papers, Supplementary to Elliot's Debates, V, 296. 
^ Ibid., 460. Speech of Williamson. 

■"N. C. State Records, XX, 778. The Delegates to Governor 
Caswell. 
- ^'Wm. Blount. 



465] First Years of Independence: Union. 21 

felt that this election was the preliminary skirmish of the war 
to be waged over the adoption of the federal constitution, 
hence an unusual degree of interest was awakened forthwith. 
The conservatives, now beginning to call themselves federal 
men, made strenuous efforts to control the approaching As- 
sembly. They were so far successful that when the Assem- 
bly met in November they were able on joint ballot to elect 
Samuel Johnston governor and to call a state convention to 
meet at Hillsboro in the following July to pass upon the 
Constitution. At the beginning of the year Johnston was 
inducted into office with great enthusiasm, his election ap- 
pearing to the federalists as an augury of success for the 
Constitution.^'* Others, however, were not deceived as to 
the shoals ahead. ''^ The radical leaders, now anti-federal- 
ists, aroused themselves to the greatest activity, determined 
to secure an overwhelming majority in the convention. 
Willie Jones began early in 1788 to marshal his forces. 
Residing at Halifax on the Roanoke, he personally directed 
the campaign in the eastern and northeastern sections of 
the state. Able lieutenants directed it elsewhere. Timothy 
Bloodworth, a blacksmith, led the party in the southern or 
Wilmington district ; David Calwell, a pure and patriotic 
Presbyterian divine, had a large influence in the central 
counties, and that of Judge Samuel Spencer and Major 
Joseph McDonnell, of King's Mountain fame, was the most 
prominent in the west. 

The party cue was given by Jones at Halifax.*^ The 
federal judiciary, he said, would play havoc with the au- 
thority of the state's courts ; the poor were to be ruined 
by money collections and federal taxation ; there was no pro- 
vision for freedom of conscience. All these ideas, and others 
of like tenor, were potent arguments to the average North 
Carolinian against surrendering his dearly bought liberties 
to an untried form of government. The state judiciary, 

^ Davie to Iredell, McRee, II, 217. 
*'Maclaine to Iredell, Dec. 25, 1787, McRee, II, 183. 
"" McRee, II, 217. Davie to Iredell, outlining Jones' position. 
Davie was neighbor to Jones at Halifax. 



22 State Rights in North Carolina. [466 

from the first, was practically unanimous in opposition to 
the Constitution.*^ Party lines were closely drawn. On 
account of his compliant attitude at Philadelphia Alexander 
Martin was now rejected by his former constituents. The 
western country generally was decidedly opposed to the 
Constitution ; the Cape Fear region was generally favor- 
able ; and the eastern country, where all the federal lead- 
ers resided, was closely contested. In Dobbs, an eastern 
county, the federalists, finding that they were in danger of 
losing the election, raised a riot, put out the candles, de- 
stroyed the books and knocked to pieces the ballot-boxes.*^ 
Generally, however, the elections took place without fraud 
or violence and were for the most part favorable to the anti- 
federalists. 

Absolute and final rejection of the Federal Constitution 
seemed to be the first plan of the North Carolina anti- 
federal leaders. Before the Hillsboro convention met, how- 
ever, ten states, among them Virginia, had ratified the Con- 
stitution. Jones, therefore, announced*^ his purpose of pro- 
curing rejection in order to give weight to the amendments 
which the states were preparing. The federalists redoubled 
their efforts. They believed now that the convention would 
have an issue favorable to the Constitution despite the anti- 
federal election successes.^" Their faith was grounded on the 
assumption that the weight of the decision of the ten states, 
which had already secured the new form of government, 
would be a moral force sufficiently strong to induce com- 
pliance by North Carolina. Iredell issued a strongly written 
pamphlet^ ^ in which he answered the objections to the Con- 
stitution made by Mason of Virginia. A second pamphlet,^- 

"McRee, II, 183, Maclaine to Iredell. 

" McRee. II, 221. Witherspoon to Iredell. 

" Ibid., II, 230. Davie to Iredell, July 9, 1788. 

'" McRee, II, 341, Hooper to Iredell. 

"^ This pamphlet was published under the pseudonym of " Mar- 
cus." It is republished in McRee, II, 186-215. 

^' McRee, in his Life and Correspondence of James Iredell, II, 
232, makes the following characterization of Jones, which, to the 
writer, seems peculiarly fitting. " Willie Jones, of Halifax, was the 
most influential politician in the State : ultra-democratic in theory, 



467] First Years of Independence: Union. 23 

the joint product of the pens of Iredell and Davie, appeared 
a little later. In this the authors strove to meet the pop- 
ular objections to a federal judiciary and to the absence in 
the Constitution of a guarantee that the states retained all 
the powers not delegated by them to the federal government. 

The convention, consisting of two hundred and eighty- 
four members, met at Hillsboro, July 21, 1788. The promi- 
nent federalists present were Governor Johnston, James 
Iredell, William R. Davie, R. D. Spaight, and Alexander 
Maclaine. Counterbalancing these on the anti- federal side 
were Willie Jones, Timothy Bloodworth, David Calwell, 
Judge Samuel Spencer, and Joseph McDowell. Out of def- 
erence to his office the anti-federalists made no objection to 
the choice of Governor Johnston as president, his election 
being by unanimous vote. The federalists, conscious that 
they were greatly in the minority, nevertheless were not 
without hope that during the debates to follow a sufficient 
number of anti-federalists would be brought over to rati- 
fication by argument and by the late course of events in the 
other states. 

Despite the size of his majority, Jones made a tactical 
error immediately after the convention had been organized. 
Alleging that every member's mind was made up, he moved, 

he was aristocratic in habits, tastes, pursuits, and prejudices: he 
Hved sumptuously, and wore fine linen; he raced, hunted, and 
played cards ; he was proud of his wealth and social position, and 
fastidious in the selection of associates for his family. A patriot in 
the Revolution, he was now (1788) the acknowledged head of a 
great party. He was jealous of his authority and prompt to meet 
any attempt to undermine his power. His knowledge of human 
nature was consummate ; and in the arts of insinuation he was 
unrivalled. . . . Though generally relentless and uncompromising as 
a partisan, he had a generous heart and on more than one occasion, 
gave signal proof that he could soar above the murky atmosphere 
of party. He was a loving and cherished disciple of Jefferson, and 
was often taunted with his subserviency to Virginia ' abstractions.' 
He seldom shared in the discussions (on the floor of the conven- 
tion). His time of action was chiefly during the hours of adjourn- 
ment: Then it was that he stimulated the passions, aroused the 
suspicions, or moderated the ardor of his followers : then it was 
that, smoking his pipe, and chatting of crops, ploughs, stock, and 
dogs, he stole his way into the hearts of honest farmers and erected 
there thrones for himself." 



24 State Rights in North Carolina. [468 

in the interest of frugality and economy of the public funds, 
that the question upon the Constitution be put at once. He 
receded from this position, however, the moment it became 
evident that a majority desired to hear the Constitution dis- 
cussed. His power reasserted itself in influencing his fol- 
lowers against entering into the debate. The floor of the 
convention was left to the advocates of the Constitution, 
the anti-federalists apparently constituting themselves into 
a jury before which that instrument was on trial. Again 
and again the federalists challenged them to debate the por- 
tions of the Constitution which, outside of the convention, 
had been declared objectionable.^^ Perseverance in this 
course finally drew the anti-federalists into debate and 
developed their position. 

Their first objection was made to the caption "We, the 
people," with which the Constitution begins. Joseph Taylor, 
a decided state rights member, said : " We, the people, is 
surely an assumed power. . . . Had it said. We \ht States, 
there would have been a federal intention in it. But, sir, 
it is clear that a consolidation is intended. Will any gen- 
tleman say that a consolidated government will answer this 
country ? It is too large. . . . We see plainly that men who 
come from New England are different from us. They are 
ignorant of our situation; they do not know the state of 
our country. They cannot with safety legislate for us."^* 
Judge Spencer said: "The States (under the proposed con- 
stitution) do not act in their political capacities, but the 
government is prepared for individuals. . . . There ought, 
therefore, to be a bill of rights. "^^ The federalists' reply 
to this argument was that in the Constitution all powers not 
given up by the states to our general government were 
retained by the respective states. 

Indeed, on the question of the absence of a bill of rights 
the federalists assumed and held, throughout the period of 



''Elliot's Debates, IV, 103, 107. 

"Elliot's Debates, IV, 24. Ibid., IV., 152. 

'"Ibid., IV, 148. 



469] First Years of Independence: Union. 25 

the convention, a theory of the Constitution which, in after 
years, was the basis of the state rights doctrine and the 
theory upon which the South acted in 1861. On the floor 
of the convention Iredell said :^'^ " Of what use, therefore, 
can a bill of rights be in this Constitution, where the people 
expressly declare how much power they do give, and conse- 
quently retain all they do not? It (the Constitution) is a 
delegation of particular powers by the people to their rep- 
resentatives for particular purposes. It may be considered 
as a great power of attorney, under which no power can 
be exercised but what is expressly given." Davie and 
Spaight, speaking more authoritatively because of their par- 
ticipation in the formation of the Constitution and hence, 
presumably, with better knowledge of its spirit, supported 
and reinforced this interpretation of Iredell. Nor do the 
exigencies of the political situation, though pressing, suffi- 
ciently account for this interpretation, so general among the 
federalists. Unquestionably the supporters of the Consti- 
tution in North Carolina held that instrument as a compact 
between the states and the federal government, their agent. 
Second to the fear of consolidation and the absence of 
a bill of rights, the point of greatest objection raised by 
the anti-federalists was the operation of a federal judiciary 
within the limits of the state. Judge Spencer was ready 
to concede^'' that, in case federation was necessary, the fed- 
eral judiciary should have appellate jurisdiction in certain 
cases that should be specifically enumerated and original 
jurisdiction in all maritime cases ; but he thought that within 
the limits of a state the state's courts should carry into exe- 
cution the laws of Congress. It was also conceded by the 
anti-federalists that a supreme federal court might justly 
have cognizance of controversies between two or more 
states and between citizens of the same state claiming lands 
under grants of different states. Further power over the 
individual they were unwilling to yield. Inasmuch as the 

'''Elliot's Debates, IV, 148. 
"Elliot's Debates, IV, 155. 



26 State Rights in North Carolina. [47o 

Constitution had left it to Congress to give definite form 
to the federal judicial system, the people undoubtedly feared 
to subject themselves to a power outside their own borders 
whose expression might touch the daily lives of individuals 
in an intricate and possibly oppressive manner. The ab- 
sence of a guarantee of trial by jury increased the general 
distrust. 

The convention remained in session eleven days. Toward 
its close every important feature of the Constitution had 
been discussed without any appreciable change of sentiment 
in either party. The anti-federalists showed no disposition 
to yield the point of ratification. The latent danger in the 
position of isolation which North Carolina would occupy, 
placed between the northern and southern sections of 
the Union, was recognized ; but they believed that a good 
purpose could be served by non-ratification in that it would 
give weight to the general demand for amendments. Ac- 
cordingly Jones reannounced non-adoption as the un- 
changed policy of his party.^® The state ran no risk, he said, 
of being excluded from the Union when she wished to come 
in; Virginia would not oppose, and South Carolina and 
Georgia were deeply interested in North Carolina's acces- 
sion ; indeed twelve men, struggling under a heavy load, 
would not be likely to reject the assistance of a thirteenth. 
He quoted the well-known letter of Jefferson to Madison 
in which the hope was expressed that nine states would 
ratify in order to secure the Union, but that the remaining 
four would stand aloof until amendment was effected. 
Jones' reasoning was conclusive with his party. Taking 
the direction of the convention into his own hands, he now 
manoeuvred to bring about a vote which, though serving 
the same purpose, would not be a direct rejection. The 
result was a resolutions^ which asserted the necessity for 
a bill of rights and suggested that a second federal con- 
vention be called. To the resolution was appended a decla- 

"' Elliot's Debates, IV, 226. 
"'Elliot's Debates, IV, 242. 



47 1 1 First Years of Independence: Union. 27 

ration of rights similar to that in the state constitution and 
a Hst of twenty-six amendments.''*' The first amendment 
guaranteed the reserved rights of the states; the remain- 
der for the most part were restrictions upon the federal 
executive and an enlargement of the powers of Congress 
relative to the other two branches. 

The anti-federalists carried the resolution and appendages 
by a final vote of 184 to 84. A motion by a federalist to 
substitute a ratifying resolution was defeated by the same 
majority of one hundred. That the state might be in line 
to accede to the Constitution when it wished and in the 
mean time not bring upon itself the results of possible hos- 
tile trade regulations by Congress, the convention passed a 
second resolution offered by Jones which recommended to 
the state legislature that, whenever Congress should pass 
a law for collecting an impost in the states which had rati- 
fied, a similar impost should be laid on goods imported into 
North Carolina and the money arising therefrom be appro- 
priated to the use of Congress. The convention adjourned 
sine die August 4. 

Immediately after the adjournment of the North Carolina 
convention the news came that New York, the eleventh 
state, had ratified. Rhode Island and North Carolina only 
were without the federal pale. The federalists renewed 
their activity and public opinion now began to veer around 
rapidly. Friends of the Constitution in almost every town 
and county joined in petitions to the General Assembly 
asking the call of a second state convention. The state 
was on the eve of the annual August election for assembly- 
men, and the petitions were to be ready for presentation 
when the Assembly should meet in November. Upon a sug- 
gestion from Governor Johnston the petitioners preserved in 
the large number of petitions" prepared a fair degree of 
uniformity. They emphasized mainly the benefits to be de- 

"" Elliot's Debates, IV, 244. , xt r- a t • 

''These petitions are found in manuscript \n the N. L. Archives, 
Office of Secretary of State, Raleigh. 



28 State Rights in North Carolina. [472 

rived from a firm union with the other states and the desira- 
bility of the state's being in the Union when the anticipated 
amendments should be formed, so that her influence might 
be felt as to their content. 

The federalists made large gains throughout the state in 
the election of assemblymen. A most rapid change of senti- 
ment had especially manifested itself in the western counties. 
This western region generally, on both sides of the moun- 
tains, had sent up anti-federal delegates to the Hillsboro 
Convention in July, but in August elected federalists to the 
Assembly. The trans-mountain men, the inhabitants of the 
abortive state of Franklin,*'- were returning to their alle- 
giance to North Carolina, and sent federalists to the Assem- 
bly in the hope that, should the Constitution be ratified, the 
trans-mountain country would be at once ceded to the fed- 
eral government and their aspirations to statehood satisfied. 
Governor Johnston encouraged*'^ this hope enough to secure 
their support of the convention measure. ]\Ioreover, the 
sudden threat of a general Indian w^ar had alarmed the 
whole western country on both sides of the mountains in 
the fall of 1788, and caused a very widespread appreciation 
of the benefits to be derived from membership in the Union 
and its consequent protection. 

Though the swing of the political pendulum was now 
toward federalism, Jones exerted all his powers to stay its 
momentum. He declared that North Carolina should re- 
main out of the Union for at least five or six years ; that this 
length of time should elapse before the federal judiciary was 
" let in upon " the people. Centralization and the loss of 
dearly bought liberties were his themes. Though he 

^" Ramsey, J. G. M. Annals of Tennessee, 283^540. The inhabi- 
tants of the territory of North CaroHna west of the Great Smoky 
Mountains in 1784 erected a revolutionary state which they called 
Franklin, and maintained it against the authority of North Carolina 
until 1788. The questions involved were similar to those in the 
Regulators' War of 1769-71. In fact, in many of its phases it was 
a repetition of this struggle, with the scene shifted across the 
movmtains. 

''^McRee, II, 244, Johnston to Iredell. 



473] First Years of Independence: Union. 29 

strengthened the party somewhat in his own district, Jones 
could not counterbalance the general gains of the federalists. 

When the Assembly met in November its membership was 
found to be almost evenly divided between the parties. 
This represented a marvelous decrease in the strength of 
the anti-federalists as compared with their majority in the 
convention in July. The petitions for a new convention 
now came in large numbers.*^* It was evident that public 
opinion demanded that the Constitution should be consid- 
ered anew. A convention bill was prepared and passed; 
but the anti-federalists were strong enough to fix the time 
of meeting far beyond that planned by the federalists. The 
date fixed upon was November 16, 1789, six months after 
the first Congress would convene under authority of the 
Constitution. With this the federalists had perforce to 
content themselves. 

Though the feeling of sisterhood engendered between 
the states during the Revolution prevented North Carolina 
and Rhode Island from being regarded as actual foreign ter- 
ritories when the government of the new Union went into 
operation in April, 1789, it never occurred to any one to look 
upon them as other than independent sovereignties. Since 
the resolution of the Philadelphia Convention made the Con- 
stitution binding only on those states that would ratify it, 
in no quarter of the Union did the view obtain that the 
states still outside were other than political entities, sub- 
ject only to the collective will of the people of the respec- 
tive states in question. When impost and tonnage bills 
were introduced early in the first session of the first Con- 
gress there were some proposals so to regulate them that 
North Carolina would be treated as a foreign state.*'^ The 
object of course was to bring to bear economic pressure 
sufficiently heavy to induce her to enter the Union. Hugh 
Williamson, acting as agent of North Carolina in Congress, 

" Journals, N. C. Records, XXI, 5, 8, 20, 1788-1789. 
^' McRee, II, Senator Pierce Butler of South Carolina to James 
Iredell, August 11, 1789. 



30 State Rights in North Carolina. [474 

felt it incumbent upon himself to memorialize that body on 
the subject.^*' He urged forbearance, for, he said, only a 
little time was needed to bring his state into the sisterhood. 
The proposed hostile clauses, however, had not been seri- 
ously entertained. The attitude of the states in the Union 
toward those outside was one of courteous invitation. Some 
of them felt perhaps as did the fox in the fable ; having lost 
their own tails they wished North Carolina to do likewise. 
Already a " southern interest," as opposed to northern in- 
terests, was recognized by southern public men, and these 
devoutly wished for the accession of North Carolina as a 
means of preserving a balance of power. ^^ 

The second North Carolina convention called to consider 
the federal Constitution met November i6, 1789, and five 
days later passed an ordinance of ratification by a majority 
of 118 votes. The journal^^ of the six days' session con- 
tains the bare outline of the proceedings, hence it is impos- 
sible to determine the spirit of the debates unless extant 
correspondence of federalists be accepted. Governor John- 
ston wrote that the opposition was " still violent and viru- 
lent " ; and Davie upon the first day was doubtful whether 
ratification could be effected.'^'* 

But Davie had signally failed to estimate correctly the 
rapidity with which sentiment for union had developed since 
the adjournment of the Hillsboro Convention, now more 
than a year past. Moreover, the position the federalist 
leaders themselves had taken in defense of the Constitution 
had labelled them as thorough state rights men provided 
they had the state once inside the Union. Their speeches 
in the Hillsboro Convention, the propaganda they had indus- 
triously circulated after this convention, and their general 
attitude toward union conclusively show that they regarded 
the Constitution as a federal compact and the general gov- 

'' Williamson to Congress, MS., State Archives. 
*'Cf. Pierce Butler to James Iredell, McRee, II, 263. 
'^Journal of the Fayetteville Convention, 1789, in N. C. State 
Records, XXII, 36-53. 

*' McRee, II, 271. Davie to Iredell. 



475] -^"'-^^ Years of Independence: Union. 31 

'ernment as the agent of the states creating it. With this 
ideal held before the anti-federalists enough of them bowed 
their heads to enable the state to give sanction to the Con- 
stitution. 

Whatever form of government the logic of subsequent 
events may have shown the Constitution to have created, no 
one could become familiar with the spirit prevalent in both 
parties in North Carolina in 1789 without feeling that the 
adoption of the Constitution was based on a belief that it 
created a governmental compact, with powers superior to 
those of the old Articles of Confederation only for the pur- 
pose of efficient practical administration. Although North 
Carolina entered the Union only after hesitancy and mature 
deliberation, yet her subsequent history proved her loyalty 
to it as long as the Constitution represented her interpreta- 
tion of its provisions. 



CHAPTER II. 

A Half-Century Under the Constitution. 

No abrupt change occurred in the course of her internal 
affairs when North CaroHna entered the federal Union. 
Local feeling and thought adjust themselves slowly to polit- 
ical changes in external relations unless the changed rela- 
tions be so radical as to touch intimately the daily life of 
the individual. In North Carolina a majority trusted that 
the new form of government would prove its right to exist, 
but few believed in its perfection. To the country at large 
the government was as yet a political experiment ; nor did 
the Constitution command universal respect. The anti- 
federalists soon formed themselves into the Republican 
party and assumed the role of critic. 

Ratification had been effected in North Carolina during 
a surface reaction from the tendency toward state indi- 
vidualism represented by Willie Jones. Once inside the 
Union, however, the advantages arising therefrom began to 
manifest themselves and prevented a decided second reac- 
tion, but the adjustment to the new order of things was 
not without jars and friction between federal and state au- 
thority. Two incidents occurred in 1790 which, though 
small in themselves, nevertheless served to show how lightly 
the federal authority was held during the first years of the 
Union. Congress had passed an act in June, 1789, pre- 
scribing an oath of office in support of the Constitution for 
such state officials as governors, members of the legislature, 
and others. When the excitement arose in the last months of 
1790 over Hamilton's scheme for federal assumption of state 
debts, the popular branch of the North Carolina General As- 
sembly, much opposed to assumption, refused by a vote of 55 
to 26 to take the oath to support the federal Constitution.^ 

^Journal of the House. N. C. State Records, XXI, 1021. 

32 



477] ^"^ Half -Century Under the Constitution. 33 

The second incident concerned the adjustment of the federal 
judiciary. A writ of certiorari was issued from the federal 
district court of North Carolina by the direction of three of 
the United States Supreme Court judges (Blair, Rutledge, 
and Wilson), directed to the Court of Equity in North Caro- 
lina, for bringing up an equity case.^ The state judges re- 
fused obedience to the writ and denied the Supreme Court's 
authority in the case. The General Assembly at once passed 
a vote of thanks^ to the judges for their action. The case 
was never acted on afterward and with the early reform of 
the judiciary was thrown out. 

The Assembly passed strong resolutions* against the 
assumption and funding measures of Hamilton, and per- 
emptorily instructed the state's Senators, Samuel Johnston 
and Benjamin Hawkins, to oppose any excise or direct tax 
by the federal government.^ The North Carolina members 
of the House of Representatives, though not yet all arrived, 
were opposed to the whole scheme. In the debates upon 
the question Hugh Williamson alleged that "assumption" 
would be interference with the reserved rights of the states 
and contradictory to the interpretation North Carolina had 
put upon the Constitution in her act of ratification. He 
cited an amendment which had unanimously passed her rati- 
fication convention and had been proposed to Congress with 
the expectation of favorable action. The amendment in 
question declared that Congress should not directly or indi- 
rectly, either by itself or through the judiciary, inter- 
fere with any state in its plans for liquidating and dis- 
charging its public debt. Williamson showed" that North 
Carolina was ready to account according to the spirit of the 
original contract, a contract that had not been altered by 
the formation of a new government. His plan was that a 

■ Dallas, U. S. Supreme Court Reports, II, 412. 

'N. C. State Records, XXI, 1054. 

* N. C. State Records, XXI, 1055. 

° Ibid., XXI, 1029, 1049. 
,,°9-^'^s and Seaton. Hist, of Congress, I, 1490, Speech of Hugh 
Williamson on Assumption. 



34 State Rights in North Carolina. [478 

settlement should first be made between the federal govern- 
ment and the individual states, and the federal government 
then be allowed to assume the remainder still due from the 
country. 

The attitude of North Carolina materially delayed the 
assumption program. Smith of South Carolina, Sedgwick 
of Massachusetts, and Jackson of Georgia replied at length 
to Williamson's speech. Jackson's position was one of con- 
ciliation. He said: "A bare majority, if the measure be 
carried, is all that can be expected, and I will ask if this 
bare majority would satisfy North Carolina? Suppose it 
carried by this majority, and the people of North Carolina 
will not submit, is it intended to reduce them to obedience 
by force? Is this a language for freemen? . . . Reconcile 
them to the measure ; bring forward your funds ; show them 
they are not to be oppressed, and you will accomplish this 
business much sooner."' In the mean time the remainder 
of the North Carolina delegation arrived in New York. 
Their accession made the non-assumption party the stronger, 
and thereupon the debates upon the subject ended for 
the time. The proposition was not again brought forward 
until the opportunity occurred later to pair it with the con- 
troversy between the northern and southern states over the 
seat for the federal capital. The outcome was the well- 
known compromise by which the states' debts were assumed 
and the site for the capital located on the banks of the 
Potomac. 

The federal excise laws of 1791, from which the assump- 
tionists purposed to derive the funds to carry out their 
measures, occasioned great ferment in all the mountainous 
region of the United States. The greatest storm center was 
western Pennsylvania, the trouble there culminating in 1794 
in the " Whiskey Insurrection." In western North Caro- 
lina, if resistance to the excise laws was less organized, it 
was not the less effective. Distillers refused to pay the tax ; 
federal collectors were powerless and discreetly remained 

' Gales and Seaton, Hist, of Cong., II, 1505. 



479] ^ Half -Century Under the Constitution. 35 

out of the excited localities. The spirit of resistance spread 
also to the eastern counties and the popular ferment did not 
abate until the excise laws were amended.® 

A general discontent with the measures which Congress 
had deemed necessary for adjustment of the new regime 
accelerated in North Carolina the reaction to anti-federalism. 
The first political victim of the reaction was Samuel John- 
ston, who, regarded as the most uncompromising federalist 
in the state, failed to secure his reelection to the United 
States Senate when his term expired in March, 1792. Alex- 
ander Martin was chosen as his successor. Martin ranked 
as a radical until his return from the Philadelphia Con- 
vention in 1787, after which he continuously advocated the 
adoption of the Constitution and in 1789 was elected gov- 
ernor by the federalists in recognition of his services. In 
1792 he was again in the confidence of the anti-federalists 
and owed to them his election to the Senate. In the con- 
gressional elections of 1793 the anti- federalists were suc- 
cessful in every district save one — the Scotch district in the 
Cape Fear region.^ With Johnston retired to private life 
the remaining federalist leaders quietly supported practi- 
cally the same state rights principles as the anti-federalists. 
James Iredell, whom Washington had appointed to the Su- 
preme Court bench, set them the example in his dissenting 
opinion in the case of Chisholm vs. Georgia.^^ 

This case, before the Supreme Court of the United States 
in 1792 and 1793, raised the question whether a state could 
be sued by a citizen of another state and, bearing directly 
upon the question of state sovereignty, thus attracted gen- 
eral attention. The opinion of the Court afihrmed the right 
of suit by a citizen and that the state was amenable to the 
jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, thus deciding against 



'McRee, II, 330, 335, cf. Davie to Iredell, August 2, 1791, and 
Johnston to Iredell, April 15, 1791. 

" Under the new apportionment on the basis of the census of 1790 
North Carolina now had ten Representatives. 

" For the report of this important case see Dallas' U. S. Supreme 
Court Reports, II, 419-480. 



36 State Rights in North Carolina. [480 

Georgia and in favor of Chisholm, a citizen of South 
Carolina. 

Justice Iredell, however, wrote a dissenting opinion which 
contained the first expression of state rights doctrine ema- 
nating from the Supreme Court. Iredell argued that the 
states were successors to the sovereignty wrenched from the 
English crown, and upon this he built up the theory of dele- 
gated or divided sovereignty, holding that every state in the 
Union, in every instance where its sovereignty had not been 
delegated to the United States, was as completely sovereign 
as were the United States in respect to the powers delegated 
by the federal compact. A state, remaining sovereign, could 
not, therefore, be sued by individuals. Georgia acted upon 
the theory laid down by Iredell and stood at defiance. The 
judgment remained unenforced until the eleventh amend- 
ment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1798, re- 
moved such questions from the cognizance of the Court. 

The Republican party throughout the country received 
Iredell's opinion as an exposition of its own theory of a defi- 
nite line of demarcation between the rights reserved by the 
states and those delegated to the federal government. The 
opinion is the more interesting in this connection because 
of Iredell's influence upon the adoption of the Constitution 
by North Carolina. His interpretation of its provisions in 
1793 was in the same state rights spirit with which he had 
defended it in 1 788-1789. 

The Alien and Sedition Acts passed by Congress in June 
and July, 1798, gave the Republicans their next opportunity 
to raise the state rights issue. These acts placed large dis- 
cretionary power in the hands of the President and had a 
decided monarchical flavor. The Kentucky Resolutions,^^ 
passed in protest at the instance of Thomas Jefferson, made 
a great advance on the doctrine contained in Iredell's opin- 
ion in the Georgia case. In these Resolutions each state, as 
a party to the Constitutional compact, to which it had ac- 
ceded as a state, was declared to be its own final judge as to 

"Elliot's Debates, IV, 540- Preston's Documents, 295. 



481] A Half-Century Under the Constitution. 37 

infractions of the Constitution by the federal government; 
and whenever the federal government assumed undele- 
gated powers its acts were unauthoritative, void, and of no 
force. The Alien and Sedition Acts were declared to be 
the product of assumed powers and therefore void. Reso- 
lutions followed from Virginia^- supporting those of Ken- 
tucky. Copies of both were sent to all the other states. 

The time of their reception in Northi Carolina was unpro- 
pitious for their success in creating sentiment against the 
government. Wm. R. Davie was governor and, though 
ranking as a state rights federalist, was zealous for the 
safety of the Union. He immediately took the ground 
that at this particular juncture the Union's existence was 
in more danger than the rights of the states,^^ and he 
therefore threw all his influence against any legislative co- 
operation with Virginia and Kentucky. The Kentucky Res- 
olution came before the North Carolina Assembly December 
21, 1798, and on the twenty-fourth a mild resolution was in- 
troduced in the senate expressing the pain with which the 
body viewed the enactment of the Alien and Sedition laws. 
Davie's followers secured its rejection by a close vote.^^ 
The lower house on the same day passed a somewhat 
stronger resolutions^ and, disregarding the senate, ordered 
copies forwarded to Senators and Representatives. No joint 
action was ever had. But the attitude of North Carolina 
toward the "Doctrine of 1798" was not one of hostility. 
Her non-action was due to the disinclination on the part of 
the state administration to encourage dissensions at a time 
of such high party feeling. 

'= Elliot's Debates, IV, 528. 

" Governor Davie's alarm was genuine. In the summer of 1799, 
having closely interviewed some gentlemen just returned from the 
races at Petersburg, Virginia, he wrote Judge Iredell that the Vir- 
ginia leaders seemed determined upon the overthrow of the general 
government; that if no other method would effect it, they would risk 
it upon the chances of war. He understood that some of them 
talked of seceding, while others advocated the policy and practica- 
bility of severing the Union into two portions. McRee, II, Davie 
to Iredell. June 17. 1799. 

"Journal of the N. C. Senate, 1798, 75-77. 

*' Journal of the N. C. House of Commons, 1798, 78. 



38 State Rights in North Carolina. [482 

When a successor to President Washington was to be 
chosen in 1796, nine North Carolina districts chose Jeffer- 
son electors and one, the Scotch district, an Adams elector. 
But in 1800, as the storm and stress of federal politics in- 
creased, the old federalist forces began to fear for the safety 
of the Union, and the party showed signs of reviving 
strength." The Jay Treaty, the Alien and Sedition Acts, 
and the " Resolutions of '98," together with personal jeal- 
ousies of the national leaders, had all combined to lend a 
bitterness to the presidential contest in 1800 that caused a 
very general apprehension of the disruption of the Union." 

The result of this apprehension in North Carolina enabled 
the federalists to carry four electoral districts for Adams, 
one of them being the western or Salisbury district. The 
Republican defeat here marked the beginning of the rever- 
sion of the whole western half of the state to its old prin- 
ciple of antagonism to eastern control,^^ under whatever 
party name the control might be exercised. Though the 
federalists had made a good fight for regeneration of their 
party they were now practically without a state leader of 
note. Iredell had died in 1799; Samuel Johnston had 
passed into pettish and grumbling retirement ; Wm. R. 
Davie had accepted President Adams' appointment as one 
of the three envoys extraordinary^'* to the Court of the first 
Consul. Thus, stripped of its old prominent leaders, the 
federalist party in North Carolina fell into complete disor- 
ganization upon the election of Jefferson to the presidency in 
1800. Thereafter the several districts which remained fed- 
eralist were animated more by sectional state issues than 
by differences with the Republicans on national questions. 

The Republican party on the other hand now rapidly en- 
trenched itself in places of power. Through Representative 

^^ Raleigh Register, Dec. 3, 1799. 

" Cf. Von Hoist, Constitutional and Political History of the 
United States, I, 168. 

'' Infra, Chap. HI. 

^" This was Adams' famous second mission to France, composed 
of Oliver Elsworth, Wm. Vans Murray and Davie. The latter was 
appointed to fill the place declined by Patrick Henry. 



483] A Half -Century Under the Constitution. 39 

Nathaniel Macon, Jefferson judiciously used the federal pat- 
ronage in the state appointments, only those of unquestioned 
loyalty to Republican principles being placed in office.^*' 
Macon was a worthy disciple of Willie Jones, with even more 
ultra-democratic principles than his political preceptor. He 
had been in Congress since 1791 and by the end of the cen- 
tury had assumed the leadership of the party relinquished 
by Jones. His position in national politics as speaker of 
the House of Representatives from 1801 to 1806 did not 
lessen his interest in party affairs in the state. 

For the first two decades of the new century North Caro- 
lina, Republican throughout in each branch of her govern- 
ment, uniformly supported the successive national admin- 
istrations of the Republican party. The problem before the 
general government during the first fifteen years was to pre- 
vent the humiliation and commercial ruin of the young re- 
public at the hands of either France or England. The pro- 
tests of the northern federalists when in 1812 Madison's 
administration opened war on England found no answering 
echo among their former party associates in North Caro- 
lina.-^ Still more profound was the silence when the New 
England federalists in 18 14 met in the Hartford Conven- 
tion for the generally understood purpose of forcing a peace 
with England, or, failing in that, of possibly seceding from 
the Union. -^ 

Since the Hartford Convention practically reasserted 
only the doctrine laid down in the Kentucky Resolutions of 
1798,^^ the Republican party, with state rights as its car- 
dinal principle, could attack the policy of the New England 
states only on the ground that their action was a betrayal 
of the cause of common defense. North Carolina Repub- 

=° Dodd. Life of Nathaniel Macon, 169. 

''Cf. Message of Gov. Wm. Hawkins to the North Carohna 
General Assembly, Nov. 18, 181 2, Executive Letter-book. 
-The report of the Hartford Convention is given in 7 Niles' 

Register, 305-313. . , t. , t. 

■^ Von. Hoist, I, 268, holds that the theory in the Kentucky Reso- 
lutions was identical with that upon which the Hartford Conven- 
tion acted. 



40 State Rights in North Carolina. [484 

licanism, therefore, freely conceded to Massachusetts and 
her neighbors at Hartford the right to speak their sovereign 
wills. But the concession was coupled with the suggestion 
that they should speak through their legislatures, and at a 
time when all were not endangered by a public enemy ; in 
short, that " they should speak like Americans."-'* The 
timely ending of the war relieved the situation for the Re- 
publican party at large, and the chief result of the Hartford 
Convention was to draw odium upon the federalist party 
sufficient to assure its swift dissolution. 

From 18 1 5 to 1820 North Carolina, in common with the 
rest of the Union, enjoyed a period of political calm which 
came as a welcome relief after the party strife and turmoil 
preceding and accompanying the war with England. The 
people seemed satisfied with the type of Republicanism 
administered successively by Jefferson, Madison and Mon- 
roe. The Union, now that it had stood the test of a war, 
became a fixture in the political conceptions of the people; 
sentiment, as well as political wisdom and experience, was 
beginning to form a bulwark for its protection.-^ 

The period of calm was soon broken, however, by the 
development of a serious political contest between the North 
and the South over slavery. Its occasion was the applica- 
tion of Missouri to be admitted into the Union as a slave 
state. 

A North Carolina newspaper of February 26, 1819, gave 
the first intimation to the people of the state that the ques- 
tion had been opened as a sectional issue. It said : " In the 
House of Representatives yesterday a decision took place in 
a committee of the whole, which, if confirmed by the House, 
may be expected to have an important bearing on the polit- 
ical relations of the several states."-** This decision was to 
require of Missouri, as the condition of her admission, the 

^* Raleigh Register, Dec. 8, 1814, and Jan. 27, 1815. 

■" 17 Niles' Register, 31, has a very interesting account at this date 
of a fervent prayer for the permanence of the Union uttered by a 
North Carohna Revolutionary veteran upon his death-bed. 

^American Recorder, Feb. 26, 1819. 



485] A Half -Century Under the Constitution. 41 

prohibition of further introduction of slaves and the emanci- 
pation of all slave children after the admission as soon as 
they reached the age of twenty-five. This was the first 
instance of such a condition being proposed as the condition 
of admission for a new state, and the South at once saw in 
it a purpose on the part of the free states to circumscribe 
and finally to strangle slavery just when, on account of the 
increased demand for cotton by Europe since the war of 
1812, the institution was beginning to return a very large 
profit.-' The Missouri Compromise and its discussion, there- 
fore, clearly demonstrated that in slavery arose the gravest 
domestic question hitherto set for the solution of the Amer- 
ican people. Strict construction and state rights, less em- 
phasized in the South since the Republican ascendancy in 
1800, now assumed their old-time prominence. 

The North Carolina legislature gave no official utterance 
to the sentiment of the state upon the Missouri question, 
so that we must rely upon the newspapers and the expres- 
sions of public men for local public opinion. Newspapers 
were just beginning to exercise that powerful influence upon 
North Carolina politics which reached its climax with the 
group of strong editor-politicians of the period of 1850- 
1860. The Raleigh Register, the official mouthpiece of the 
Republican party since its establishment in 1799, published 
both sides of the Missouri debates, beginning with the 
speech of Otis of Massachusetts and continuing through the 
series.^* Its editorials were in the orthodox vein of decided 
opposition to any restriction upon Missouri. The Minerva, 
claiming no party name, but representing what little oppo- 
sition to the Republicans remained over from the old fed- 
eralist days, assumed an attitude very different to the Reg- 
ister. It said, January 28, 1820: "We doubt whether it be 
possible to answer Mr. King's speech of the last session 
against granting to this new state (Missouri) the privilege 
of holding our fellowmen in bondage. Yet our northern 

"Cf. Von Hoist, I, 423- 

^* Raleigh Register, March 3, 1820, et seq. 



42 State Rights in North Carolina. [486 

brethren will generously remember that it is not always 
possible for the most honest to be just." A month later the 
same paper asserted the constitutionality of restriction,-^ and 
added : " It is equally certain that true policy forbids the 
extension, as it submits to the toleration of slavery." Pro- 
ceeding, this editorial predicted that inasmuch as the evil 
of slavery was of such magnitude and involved a species 
of property which was bolstered up by the stubbornness of 
interest and prejudice, half a century would be required to 
extirpate it. Two weeks later the Minerva declared an open 
and definite hostility to the extension of slavery and began 
to advocate some form of gradual emancipation.^" Letters 
and addresses were published weekly on the subject, even 
the academic productions of college students on the rights 
of man, including the slave, finding ready welcome in its 
columns.^^ 

Though the Minerva voiced the known sentiment of sev- 
eral detached groups in North Carolina,^- and undoubtedly 
that of even a respectable minority throughout the state, 
those who had such opinions as to slavery restrictions were 
totally unorganized and their power, therefore, was corre- 
spondingly ineffectual. Yet on the Missouri question the 
difference in sentiment between the North Carolina mem- 
bers in Congress was scarcely less radical than that between 
the Register and the Minerva. 

Nathaniel Macon, now in the Senate, represented as 
always the state rights Republicanism of the eastern North 
Carolina slave-holders. He opposed to the end the whole 
plan of the Compromise, on the ground that it would be an 
admission on the part of the South that Congress could set 
meets and bounds to slavery. He held that each new ter- 
ritory, when ready for statehood, should come into the 

="The Minerva, Feb. 11, 1820. 

=°The Minerva, Feb. 25, 1820. 

'^ Ibid., March 10, 1820, et seq. 

*- These groups were the Quaker counties — Guilford, Randolph 
and Chatham, the Moravian center at Salem, and the mountain 
counties where slavery was a subject of indifference. 



487] A Half -Century Under the Constitution. 43 

Union with such institutions as it chose to adopt, provided 
such institutions were not repugnant to the ideas entertained 
by the states when they created the Union. ^^ Macon cast 
his vote against the final passage of the measure and was 
followed by six of the state's Representatives in the House. 
Montford Stokes, Macon's colleague in the Senate, voted 
for the compromise measure in each stage of its progress. 
In a letter^* to Governor Branch explaining his action 
Stokes made some general observations on the subject of 
slavery which evidently expressed the views of many others 
in the state.^^ He had voted for the Compromise, he said, 
in order that the South might secure the portion of the 
Louisiana Purchase below 36° 30' as an asylum for slaves 
already too numerous to be comfortably supported in the 
southern border-states. Further, he had " a charitable and 
respectful regard for the feelings, and even the prejudices, 
of that great portion of the Northern people that was averse 
to slavery in any form, and that would join heartily with 
us in any constitutional measure to get rid of the evil." 

This letter discloses conflicting sentiments. As a prac- 
tical border-state politician Stokes felt that slavery might 
be rendered less an evil by its diffusion over a larger terri- 
tory. A slave sold by a Virginia or North Carolina tobacco 
planter to a cotton planter in Alabama or Arkansas meant 
the transference of labor from a market over-supplied to 
one under-supplied. Such a transfer of a slave helped, to 
that extent, to relieve the congestion upon the tobacco plan- 
tation. At the same time his purchase price remained in 
the hands of the tobacco planter, probably to be expended in 
the purchase of necessary food and clothing for the already 
too numerous and yet ever increasing blacks.^^ It was thus, 

'"Annals of Congress. i6th Cong., ist sess., I, 219, et seq., for 
Macon's speech on the Compromise plan. 

^ Publ. in Raleigh Register, March 17, 1820. 

^The Western Carohnian, March 25, 1820, and Star, April I, 
1820, endorsed Stokes' views. 

"" The aggregate population of North Carolina in 1820 was 638,829. 
Of these 205,017 were slaves and 14,612 were free negroes. The 
great bulk of the slaves were in the north and middle east, i. e., 



44 State Rights in North Carolina. [488 

as the representative of a border slave state, that Stokes 
spoke for the dififusion of slavery. On the contrary, his 
words relative to some constitutional method by which to 
rid the country of slavery must be regarded partially as 
spoken in a personal sense and partially as expressing the 
theoretical hostility to slavery of that section of North Caro- 
hna from which he came — the mountainous west.^' 

When the Missouri Compromise had passed into history 
a period of party fermentation began. The Republican 
party, occupying the whole field without a rival, embraced 
in its ranks a number of strong and forceful leaders of the 
younger school of politics whose interests and policies were 
likely to clash. Among these were Henry Clay, Daniel 
Webster, John 0. Adams, Wm. H. Crawford, John C. 
Calhoun, and Andrew Jackson. Internal improvements, the 
United States banks, and the tariff showed signs of becom- 
ing leading issues. But Jackson's deadly struggle with the 
bank had not yet begun. Clay was already identified with 
the policy of a protection tariff. Calhoun in 1816 had been 
friendly to a moderate tariff, the tariff measure of that year 
being acquiesced in by the whole South.^^ But the tariff 
bill of 1820 found the South practically solid in opposition 
to further increase of duties.^" Calhoun now constituted 
himself the leader of the southern anti-tariff forces, and his 
lasting enmity to Clay's "American System " became an 
almost dramatic feature of American politics. 

As the presidential election of 1824 approached the coun- 
try presented an aspect of unusual political confusion, due 
mainly to the rival claims of the numerous leaders, and North 
Carolina politics was a reflection of that of the Union. The 

in the tier of tobacco counties which bordered Virginia and in the 
irregular tier of counties which ran southwestward across the state 
at the upper Hmits of tide-water. 

^' Senator Stokes was a native of Wilkes County. 

^Annals of Cong., ist sess., 1271. 

^' Cf. Niles' Register, vol. 18, pp. 169, 178. North Carolina cast one 
vote for the tariff bill of 1820; so also did Maryland, Virginia, and 
South Carolina. Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana 
were unanimous against it. 



489] ^ Half-Ccntiiry Under the Constitution. 45 

state was Republican to be sure. But what w^ere Republican 
principles? Who represented the Republican party? Was 
it Crawford of Georgia, Jackson of Tennessee, or Adams of 
Massachusetts? Each of these claimed the honor and had 
raised his standard. 

Despite the obscurity of party lines and the lack of defi- 
niteness of party principles there were political under- 
currents in North Carolina which never lost their way. 
Crawford was regarded as the successor to the old state 
rights Republicanism of Jefferson and Madison as opposed 
to the young national Republicanism of the western and 
northern leaders. Therefore the slave-holding section of 
North Carolina, the wealthy and populous middle east, true 
to political instinct, came to Crawford's support.'*" The 
west, less influenced by slavery, had not developed the strong, 
strict construction principles which, since 1789, had con- 
trolled the east. The line of sectional cleavage was now 
the more distinct also because of the insistent demand of 
the west for reform of the state constitution and an equali- 
zation of representation.^^ State parties, therefore, were 
already formed, and these readily adjusted themselves to 
the parties taking form under the national leaders. When 
the east declared for Crawford the west as naturally de- 
clared against him. The western party at first adopted 
Calhoun as its candidate against the " caucus " or Craw- 
ford ticket. But when the coalition between the Jackson 
and Calhoun forces occurred in March, 1824, with the first 
place assigned to Jackson, the combination, known as the 
People's Ticket, lost nothing of its popular favor.*- 

When the General Assembly met in November, 1823, the 
members arranged themselves into eastern and western par- 
ties. A western member soon introduced a resolution*^ to 

^ Macon had designated Crawford as early as 1821 as the " most 
republican and the most economical " of the prospective candidates. 
Macon to Bartlett Yancey, Dec. 12, 1821. Dodd, 334. 

"Infra, Chap. III. 

"Cf. Star. March 5, and March 12, 1824. 

" N. C. House of Commons Journal, 1823, 155. 



46 State Rights in North Carolina. [490 

instruct the state's Senators and Representatives in Congress 
to refrain from entering into a congressional nominating 
caucus. The resolution was purely a party move and was 
aimed at the old Republican party practice of naming its 
presidential candidate by the caucus method. Hence the 
Crawford forces at once attacked the resolution and a heated 
debate** of three days' duration ensued, which finally re- 
sulted in a defeat of the instructing measure by a close vote. 
The eastern members then proceeded to hold a caucus on 
December 24, and recommended Crawford to the people. 
A few months later the Washington caucus*'' formally an- 
nounced Crawford's candidacy and the Harrisburg conven- 
tion that of Jackson. Clay had been put forward by the 
legislature of Kentucky and Adams by that of Massachusetts. 

In the mean time the three Quaker counties, Guilford, 
Randolph, and Chatham, making up a district in the center 
of the state, held a meeting at Greensboro, endorsed Adams' 
candidacy, and passed resolutions**^ condemning " the at- 
tempts which have been made to suppress the voice of the 
people." Jackson was named by the Quakers as their second 
choice. Only two sets of electors, however, were placed 
before the people of the state, and these were pledged re- 
spectively to Crawford and Jackson. 

The People's ticket versus the caucus ticket enlisted the 
interest of every one who could be aroused to evince a party 

" The debates on the Fisher, or Anti-Caucus Resolutions, are pub- 
lished in weekly issues of Raleigh Register from March i to May 

5, 1824. 

*° Nathaniel Macon, though a supporter of Crawford, refused to 
attend the congressional caucus on the ground that he opposed all 
oligarchical methods. See Dodd, 337. 

*" This was in recognition of Adams' defense of the right of peti- 
tion. The North Carolina Quakers had always opposed slavery and 
had utilized the right of peaceful petition to Congress in order to 
register their protests against it. They had now for a number of 
years practiced manumission, and when this practice came into con- 
flict with positive state laws they adopted the method of coloniza- 
tion in Hayti. See Annals of Congress, 5th Cong., ist sess., 475, for 
first Quaker petition from North Carolina in regard to slavery. 
Also see 27 Niles' Register, 226, 289 and 29 Niles' Register, 247 and 
447 for instances of large shipment of slaves to Hayti by N. C. 
Quakers. 



49 1 ] A Half -Century Under the Constitution. 47 

spirit. Party principles were ill defined and entirely sec- 
ondary. The question of the method of naming the candi- 
dates was given the chief attention in North Carolina. Both 
sides made their appeals to " the people," to " the honest 
yeomanry," and to " every honest Republican." The result, 
however, was not difificult to predict. The west had attained 
a unanimity for Jackson equal to its solidarity on the state 
issue of constitutional reform. Jackson's personality was 
also awakening enthusiasm in the east among the classes 
which were less committed by interest and affinity to old 
state rights Republicanism.*^ Moreover, Crawford's ill 
health*^ decreased his chances of success in the state. 

The majority for the People's ticket in November was 
4794 votes.'*'-^ Of the sixty-three counties composing the 
state, forty-two gave Jackson majorities. This number was 
exclusive of the three Quaker counties, which had finally 
given their vote to Crawford as the weaker candidate in the 
hope^° of casting the election into the House of Representa- 
tives. The remainder of the twenty-one Crawford counties 
were middle eastern and covered the general area in which 
the slave population was greatest. 

On the first day of December the electors met in the 
state capitol and gave a unanimous vote for Jackson and 
Calhoun, one gun being fired for each elector and one extra 
for Henderson, a western county which had given a unan- 
imous vote for the People's ticket. Two months later the 
will of the state was subverted by the action of its Repre- 
sentatives in Congress. When the election was thrown into 
the House for a choice from the trio, Jackson, Adams, and 
Crawford, the thirteen Representatives from North Carolina 
voted according to party. Ten of the number ranked as 
Republicans and in consequence gave their votes to Craw- 



" Star, Feb. 6, 1824. 

" Crawford had been stricken with partial paralysis soon after his 
nomination and his recovery seemed somewhat doubtful as the 
campaign progressed. 

"Executive MS. Letter-Book, 1824, 120. 

■^'Star, Dec. 3, 1824. 



48 State Rights in North Carolina. [492 

ford. Two voted for Jackson, and one, the member from 
the Quaker district, gave his vote to Adams. ^^ 

From the standpoint of logical development the course of 
North Carolina politics during the succeeding four years 
was anomalous. The state rights or eastern party executed 
a political somersault before 1828 and in that year supported 
Jackson with the same energy with which in 1824 it had op- 
posed him. The reason is not far to seek. Jackson was now 
the only opponent of Adams, and, as a southerner, was nat- 
urally regarded as a safer guardian of southern interests. 
The eastern party, by a sort of political divination, estimated 
him as at heart a state rights man, and this estimate ever 
afterward remained unchanged, even though succeeding 
events apparently contradicted it. The west, where Jack- 
son's popularity in the state had originated, did not at once 
relinquish its candidate to the east but cast its vote for him 
in 1828. Yet a restlessness under such harmony rapidly 
developed in that section after the election, and the soil 
became fertile for the growth of Whig principles.^- 

In the mean time an issue had arisen in national politics 
which was to illustrate as graphically as had the Missouri 
controversy and the vote on the tariff bill of 1820 the diverg- 
ing interests of the North and the South. A high tarifif 
bill was proposed in Congress in 1827 and failed to become 
law only by the casting vote of Calhoun as president of the 
Senate. In February of the following year the tariff meas- 
ure since known as " the tariff of abominations " was enacted 
into law.^^ Though the opposition to this tariff measure, 
on the ground of unequal benefits to the sections, became 
general throughout the South, the direction given this oppo- 
sition by South Carolina caused her sister southern states 
to halt in their support. Her remedy, nullification, de- 
duced from the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, 

" Thus, since Adams was elected, the Quaker vote was the only 
effectual one given by the state. 
°" Cf. Western Carolinian issues, Dec. 15, 1828, et seq. 
''Act, May 19, 1828. 



493] ^ Half-Century Under the Constitution. 49 

was to be practically applied by a sovereign state in the 
abrogation of federal laws within her borders. 

The tariff and nullification controversy, intimately bound 
up with a personal difference between President Jackson 
and Vice-President Calhoun, the great exponent of the nulli- 
fication doctrine, extended over a period of five years. 
During this period North Carolina pursued the course she 
felt to be best fitted to secure a repeal of the obnoxious tariff 
and at the same time to preserve her original attitude toward 
state rights without endorsing the radical activity of South 
Carolina. Just after the tariff bill of 1827 so nearly became 
a law Governor James Iredell,^* anticipating that the pro- 
tectionists would again bring forward the measure at the 
next session of Congress, recommended to the North Caro- 
lina Assembly to put on record some form of protest. Ac- 
cordingly a resolution was passed which declared that any 
increase of import duties by Congress was inexpedient and 
unwise.^^ That this simple resolution might the more effect- 
ively gain the ear of Congress its preamble, while admitting 
that Congress had constitutional power to lay such duties, 
declared nevertheless that " interest, either pecuniary or 
political, is the great point of union, from the smallest asso- 
ciation up to the confederacy of American states ; that when- 
ever a system is adopted by the general government which 
does not equally conserve the interests of all the states then 
the right rests with any state or states to question whether 
the benefits of the Union are not more than counterbalanced 
by its evils." This guarded expression of state rights sen- 
timent was a blow in the water, the objectionable tariff being 
passed a month later. 

With Adams' defeat by Jackson, November, 1828, the 
belief became current in North Carolina that the tariff would 
be repealed as soon as the new administration took its defi- 

°* Message, Nov. 29, 1827. Executive Letter-book. Governor 
Iredell was the son of Judge James Iredell of the U. S. Supreme 
Court. 

°^ Journal of the N. C. Gen. Assembly, 1827-28, p. loi. 

4 



50 State Rights in North Carolina. [494 

nite course.^*' Events drifted, however. The Hayne- 
Webster debate occurred in January, 1830, and intensified 
interest in the strained situation. Though not yet ripe for 
action, the course South CaroHna would pursue was a fore- 
gone conclusion, and the question before the Union, there- 
fore, was how far that state would be supported by the other 
southern states. 

For North Carolina this question \vas answered directly 
by the people on Independence Day. Fourth of July cele- 
brations were held in nearly every county in the state and 
were made the occasion of a plebiscite on the South Caro- 
lina doctrine. The time-honored custom of speaking to 
toasts was in vogue at political meetings and in this practice 
North Carolinians, inspired by the native vintage of corn, 
were not backward. At Ashboro the following theme in- 
spired the orator of the day and evoked the applause of the 
people: "The Union of the States — united we stand, di- 
vided we fall ! He who wantonly engenders a feeling of hos- 
tility between the States instead of soothing it to harmony 
is a traitor to his country. Let no such man be trusted." At 
Hillsboro : " State Rights and Federal Powers — If the line 
of demarcation between them, as drawn by the f ramers of the 
constitution, should be preserved unobscured by the re- 
finements of construction, our Union will stand throughout 
Time, as the proud monument of the capacity of a free peo- 
ple to govern themselves." At Fayetteville : "Our Sister 
State — South Carolina. We esteem her worth, but depre- 
cate her example. We therefore hold her in union a friend 
— in disunion an enemy to our political institutions."^" 
Speaker vied with speaker everywhere in expression of dis- 
sent from South Carolina's doctrine, though at the same 
time care was taken to soundly rap the tariff. Calhoun's 

^"This view was expressed in the newspapers and in Gov. Owen's 
Message to Assembly, Nov. 19, 1829. MS. Letter-book. 

" The newspapers throughout the state printed accounts of the 
many celebrations and their most popular toasts. These three have 
been carefully chosen as typical and as expressive of the general 
sentiment. They are found in Raleigh Register, July 12, 1830. See 
Carolina Watchman of same date. 



495] ^ Half -Century Under the Constitution. 51 

reasoning might be without a flaw, but as yet the blessings 
of the Union were dearer to the people than statesmen's 
logic. 

When the annual Assembly met in November it was ex- 
pected to register officially the will of the people upon the 
subject of nullification. Resolutions were accordingly intro- 
duced by Jonathan Worth, a Quaker member from Randolph 
County, and after a heated debate and slight amendment 
they passed the lower branch by a vote of 87 to 27 in the, 
following form :^^ " Resolved by the General Assembly of 
North Carolina : That although the Tariff Laws as they now 
exist, are, in the opinion of this Legislature, unwise, unequal 
in their operation, and oppressive to the Southern States, 
yet this Legislature does not recognize as constitutional the 
right of an individual state of this Union to nullify a law of 
the United States." The twenty-seven members who op- 
posed this resolution were extreme state rights men and 
were actuated by a fear that the repudiation of nullification 
might mean the first successful assault upon particularism. 
They therefore preferred to make no concession, even as to 
the questionable doctrine of nullification, unless the crisis 
became acute. The senate agreed with the commons mi- 
nority and refused to commit itself. The larger freehold 
qualifications required for membership in the senate made 
this branch of the legislature less responsive than the house 
of commons to popular sentiment and more representative 
of the old Republicanism of the east. It favored resolutions 
which emphasized the reserved rights of the states and con- 
demned the tariff as a usurpation of power by the federal 
government,^^ but it was not prepared to antagonize the 
popular branch and public sentiment further than to remain 
silent. 

The famous Nullification Ordinance of South Carolina, 
the result of a state convention in 1832, brought the nulli- 

^' House Journal, Dec. 31, 1830, p. 257. 

^^ The senate was inclined to the " Sawyer Resolutions." They 
were of a strong state rights tone. See N. C. House Journal, 1830, 
175- 



52 State Rights in North Carolina. [49^ 

fication controversy to a crisis. The North CaroHna legis- 
lature was in session when the ordinance was received, and 
the senate could no longer stay the tide of dissent. Some at- 
tempt was made to link the tariff with internal improve- 
ments and make the two together a cause for requesting all 
the states to meet in a federal convention for the purpose of 
giving an authoritative interpretation of all constitutional 
questions in dispute. But this plan failed, and the two 
houses thereupon came to an agreement and passed anti- 
nullification resolutions. "^ These resolutions contained both 
the declaration that the tariff was unconstitutional and the 
decision that nullification was revolutionary and subversive 
of the Constitution. They were thus a compromise between 
the conservatism of the senate and the liberal tendencies of 
the commons. The declaration that the tariff was unconsti- 
tutional satisfied the senate and the east; the condemnation 
of nullification contented the popular branch and the west. 

Numerous mass-meetings in the counties attested the har- 
mony of the people with the action of the legislature.^^ The 
western counties greeted the South Carolina Ordinance with 
a storm of dissent, and the popular voice of the east, though 
slightly confused as to the relation of nullification to state 
rights, was scarcely less condemnatory in tone. The vener- 
able Nathaniel Macon, now in voluntary retirement, drew 
the line of demarcation between the two doctrines and finally 
settled the doubts of his party-friends. In a letter to a 
friend he said : " I have never believed a state could nullify 
and stay in the Union, but have always believed that a state 
might secede when she pleased, provided she would pay her 
proportion of the public debt ; and this right I have consid- 
ered the best safeguard to public liberty and to public justice 
that could be desired."^- This was the essence of Korth 
Carolina particularism, and when thus set forth by Macon it 

^"Senate Journal, 1832-33, p. 99; N. C. House Journal, 1832-33, 
pp. 224, 225. 

"^ For reports of these meetings see Raleigh Register. Nov. 30, 
Dec. 7, Dec. 14, and Dec. 21, 1832. Also current issues of Carolina 
Watchman and Raleigh Star. 

^ Macon to Samuel P. Carson, Feb. 9, 1833. Dodd, 385. 



497] -^ Half-Ccntury Under the Constitution. 53 

set at rest the fears of a group of eastern politicians who, 
led by Samuel T. Sawyer in the Assembly, had opposed the 
renunciation of the right of a state to nullify, lest in so doing 
some portion of the original state rights doctrine should be 
endangered. "^^ 

It was with a feeling of relief that North Carolina re- 
ceived the assurance sent forth to the states by Governor 
Hayne that South Carolina would hold her ordinance in 
abeyance until the results of Clay's compromise tariff meas- 
ure of 1833 were known. This tariff reduction measure 
was passed by Congress but was accompanied by a bill for 
collecting the revenue under military supervision, if needful. 
This latter bill, known as the " force bill," served in part 
to placate the domineering spirit of President Jackson and 
to save the face of Congress.''* But reduction of the tariff 
had brought relief to the strained situation. The nullifica- 
tion excitement was now practically passed, in North Car- 
olina people suddenly ceasing to talk or write about it. Its 
last echo was the introduction of a bill the following year 
to instruct the state's Senators and Representatives to use 
their endeavor for the repeal of the " force bill," which was 
deemed " inconsistent with the sovereignty of the States and, 
therefore, dangerous to the liberties of the people."*'^ 

The repudiation of the doctrine of nullification by North 
Carolina can in no sense be interpreted as a renunciation 
of state rights as held at the time of the adoption of the 
Constitution. That the state was profoundly stirred by the 
excitement is true ; and the large number of popular meet- 
ings held in consequence offers an opportunity to study di- 
rectly the spirit of the masses, and at the same time shows 
the tendency of the people of North Carolina, in contra- 
distinction to its political leaders, to take a direct personal 
interest in the policy of the state. Though these meetings 
almost uniformly registered protests against nullification, 

"Journal N. C. House of Commons, Jan. 24, 1832, 2d Sawyer 
Resolutions. 
'^ Ci. Schouler, Hist, of United States, IV, 106. 
°° Journal of N. C. House of Commons, 1834, p. 229. 



54 State Rights in North Carolina. [498 

only one has been discovered by the writer in which the sen- 
timent was expressed that the United States constituted one 
great political society and that the government thereof was 
essentially a national government.*^" On the contrary, there 
were evidences in the legislature, in mass-meetings, in the 
press, and in private correspondence which showed a spirit 
anxious to find a way to repudiate the doctrine of nullifica- 
tion, but at the same time to save the original doctrine of 
state rights. Macon's letter, already cited, probably ex- 
pressed as accurately as could be done the attitude of the 
controlling force in the state. 

The close trimming of the old Republicans between 
nullification and the older doctrine of state rights enabled 
them to retain supremacy in state politics until 1835. 
Jackson was uniformly supported through his two admin- 
istrations. The President's veto of the Maysville Turnpike 
appropriation and his fight on the United States Bank 
were, to North Carolina Republicans, a fulfillment of their 
trust in him. These two factors caused the Assembly 
in 183 1 to recommend him to the people for reelection."^ 
and again, in 1834, to instruct the state's Senators to vote 
for expunging from the records the resolutions of censure 
of the President by which the United States Senate had 
expressed its displeasure at his removal of the government's 
deposits from the United States Bank."* Out of the action 
of the legislature in instructing the Senators grew a contest 
which, superimposed upon the sectional differences of the 
east and the west, drew the final line of demarcation between 
the old Republicans and the young Republicans, or Demo- 
crats and Whigs. Willie P. Mangum and Bedford Brown 

®° This meeting was held in Wilmington and was presided over by 
ex-Governor Owen. Strangeh' inconsistent with this. Wilmington 
was the strongest secession centre in the State in 1860-61. See 
Raleigh Register, Jan. 4, 1833. 

"'Resolutions. Laws of N. C, 1831-35, p. 139. 

® Three southern states passed instructing resolutions — Alabama, 
Mississippi, and North Carolina. For the bank controversy and 
the fight over " expunging " see Benton's Thirty Years' View, I, 373,. 
et seq. 



499] ^ Half -Century Under the Constitution. 55 

were the state's Senators. Mangum, a latitudinarian of the 
Henry Clay type, refused to be instructed by the legislature 
and voted against the expunging resolutions in each in- 
stance.*^'' Brown, a state rights man of the Macon school, 
was submissive to the mandate of his state. About the 
standards of the two Senators two factions arrayed them- 
selves and joined in a fierce contest for supremacy. Though 
the question of instruction was the nominal issue, ^^ the dif- 
ferences of the factions were much wider. Under the lead 
of Mangum were ranged all those who were anti-Jackson, 
pro-bank, for internal improvement by the federal govern- 
ment, and who favored a reform in the state constitution. 
Brown led those who held to the opposite principles. In 
general Mangum's support was the west. Brown's, the east. 
Both parties claimed Jefferson as their political leader, both 
professed state rights principles. The Whig party, in an 
endeavor to eclipse its rival, now designated itself the 
" State Rights Whig party " during the first years of its 
existence. But cooperation with the national Whig party 
soon fostered the growth of a spirit of nationalism among 
the Whig leaders which was directly opposed to the particu- 
laristic principles of the state Democracy. 

Under the guidance of Mangum and Governor David 
Lowrie Swain the Whig party distanced its competitor and 
in 1835 was able to force constitutional reform upon the 
reluctant east. This victory was followed by a Whig regime 
of fifteen years' duration. '^^ In the mean time, as political 
power was about to slip from the grasp of the Democrats, 
the party of real partieularisni, it is pertinent to examine the 
question of slavery, over which, in an effort to retain 
supremacy, the danger cry was now raised. 

The first attention to slavery in the public councils of 
North Carolina after the subsidence of the Missouri Com- 

«' Benton, Thirty Years' View, I. 528. 

"Cf. Dodd, Life of Macon, 381. 

" Since reform of the state constitution was the lever by which 
the Whigs gained supremacy it will be treated in a separate chapter 
and as introductory to the Whig regime. 



56 State Rights in North Carolina. [500 

promise excitement was that given in a message of Gover- 
nor Gabriel Holmes to the Assembly in 1824.'- The gov- 
ernor called attention to the large number of free negroes 
who, being emancipated by their masters, had emigrated to 
the island of Hayti and were now returning to the United 
States, particularly to North Carolina. In view of the fact 
that these were likely to have become inoculated with ideas 
of freedom not meet for the slave, he suggested a law to 
prohibit the return of such persons to the state. No action 
was taken, however, until 1826. In this year a law was 
enacted to prohibit the entry of free negroes, by land or 
water, under a penalty of five hundred dollars fine. Failure 
to pay the fine subjected the delinquent to ten years' servi- 
tude and to removal from the bounds of the state within 
thirty days after its expiration, or to a repetition of the ser- 
vice penalty. As to the free negroes already within the state, 
the act provided that any who were able to labor and yet 
spent their time in idleness and dissipation should be com- 
mitted to jail and, upon failure to give good security for 
future industry and good behavior, should be bound to ser- 
vice by the court of the county in which the case fell. Chil- 
dren of such parents were also to be bound to service and 
taught a useful trade. '^'^ Care was taken to provide a jury 
trial in all these cases. In 1828 a law was enacted charging 
the poll-tax of all free negroes to the person upon whose 
land they lived. '^'^ These laws were primarily for the pur- 
pose of protecting the slave from the influence of the Ishma- 
elites of his race. 

Simultaneously with the founding of the American Anti- 
Slavery Society and the first issue of Garrison's Liberator 
in Boston, Massachusetts, North Carolina, in common with 
other southern states, as if in answer to the threat implied 
by the New England movement, began to tighten the cordon 
about her slaves. Thus the years 1830 and 1831 were years 

"Executive Letter-book, MS. Nov. 16, 1824. 
"Laws of North Carolina, 1826, 13. 
'* Ibid., 1828-29, p. 21. 



50 1 ] A Half -Century Under the Constitution. 57 

of unusual activity in slave legislation. The mere titles of 
the laws enacted will show their nature and object. The 
following illustrate their spirit: To prevent all persons 
from teaching slaves to read and write, the use of figures 
excepted ; to provide further punishment for harboring and 
maintaining runaway slaves; to regulate emancipation of 
slaves; to prevent free persons of color from hawking and 
peddling outside the county in which they reside; and a 
supplementary act for the good government of free persons 
of color." In the summer which followed the passage of 
these laws by North Carolina occurred the Nat Turner 
slave insurrection in Southampton County, Virginia. 
Southampton bordered the North Carolina line, and the wild 
plot extended over the border among the dense slave popu- 
lation of the contiguous counties."'^ Murfreesboro, the 
nearest North Carolina town, received many of the panic- 
stricken refugees from the disturbed area, and quickly raised 
a troop of horse and dispatched it across the border to the 
seat of trouble." When the extent of the massacre became 
known wild alarm spread throughout the slave area of 
North Carolina. Rumors of slave risings flew thick and 
fast, from Murfreesboro on the north to Wilmington on the 
south and as far as Hillsboro to the west. The town 
of Wilmington remained under arms many hours in antici- 
pation of an attack by slave insurrectionists who were sup- 
posed to be gathering like a black cloud in Duplin, Samp- 
son, and New Hanover Counties.'^^ Raleigh was reported 
to be threatened from the southward and was put in a state 
of defense.'^^ Hillsboro hastily organized a company of 
militia to be sent to the defense of the capital ; many other 
towns organized and drilled volunteer companies, and the 
patrol system sprang suddenly into existence. The scare 
was genuine throughout the whole slave area of the state. 

"Laws of N. C, 1830-1831, pp. 11-16. These laws were all passed 
between November, 1830, and February, 1831, six months previous 
to the Nat Turner Rebellion. 

" Drewry, The Southampton Insurrection, 5^75- 

" Wheeler, Historical Sketches, II, 210. Personal recollections. 

"Wilmington Recorder, Nov. 16, 1831. 

"Raleigh Register, Sept. 15 and Sept. 22, 1831. 



58 State Rights in North Carolina. [502 

Its immediate result was the trial and swift conviction of a 
number of slaves and free negroes on the charge of con- 
spiracy.^" The excited state of the popular mind had its 
reflex in the laws of the succeeding Assembly, and machinery 
was set up for the speedy trial of slaves in capital cases.^^ 
The law of 1741, which authorized county courts to grant 
certificates to slaves permitting them in certain cases to 
carry guns, was repealed.®- But for the most part slaves 
received the protection accorded private property, and the 
onus of the legislation growing out of the Southampton in- 
surrection fell upon the free negro.®^ The Assembly se- 
riously considered a bill which proposed to lay a tax of ten 
dollars on every negro poll in the state — slave or free — for 
the purpose of removing all free negroes to Liberia. The 
defeat of the measure seems to have been due to the objec- 
tion of slave-holders to the payment of the ten dollar tax 
on their slaves rather than to a consideration of the extra- 
constitutionality of such a measure. 

The whole South had been keyed to a high tension by 
the circumstances and horrible detail of the sixty-five mur- 
ders committed by Nat's band. A lasting impression was 
left upon the minds of all southerners ; therefore they 
were especially sensitive to abolition agitation at the North. 
Feeling was intensified by the literature now beginning to 
be circulated in the South by northern apostles of abolition. 
The question became of large importance in Congress, and 
involved a determination of whether the United States mails 
should receive for distribution the class of matter which the 
southern states viewed as incendiary. President Jackson 
recommended to Congress the passage of a law which would 
prohibit the distribution of such matter. Opposition devel- 
oped among the northern representatives and this contro- 

^ Six were executed in New Hanover County, three in Duplin, and 
several in Sampson. Wilmington Recorder, Dec. 16, 1831 ; and 
Raleigh Register, Oct. 20, 1831, and Sept. 22, 1831. 

"Laws of N. C, 1831-32, p. 25. 

^.Ibid., 34- 

*' See Laws of N. C, 1831-32, pp. 7, 10, 24, for new stringent laws 
as to this class of citizens. 



503] A Half-Ccntiiry Under the Constitution. 59 

versy, together with the wrangle over the " gag-rules " and 
disposition of antislavery petitions, had, by 1835, brought 
the South to the ragged edge of exasperation. 

The southern Democrats, at the suggestion of Calhoun, 
soon came to the view that it was within the right of a state 
to determine what character of literature should circulate 
within its borders. Jackson's suggestion was not pressed, 
though North Carolina was grateful to him for the good 
intent.^"^ The state now strengthened her own laws regard- 
ing incendiary literature and passed resolutions which were 
her answer to agitators — in Congress or elsewhere.^^ These 
resolutions were of a strong state rights tone and declared 
the competency of the state to legislate upon all questions 
calculated to influence slavery within her borders. She 
deprecated, therefore, talk of authority, advice, or persua- 
sion from any source whatsoever, and regarded the offer of 
any of these as intrusive, whether by Congress, legislatures, 
or people of other states. 

The excessive sensitiveness exhibited in these resolutions 
marked the seriousness with which the state regarded the 
rise of the abolition movement. Upon the question of oppo- 
sition to such a movement there was no divergence of opin- 
ion in the state. Both parties condemned with equal vehe- 
mence the proposed northern movement for the abolition 
of slavery in the District of Columbia. But the Democratic 
party of the state made slavery protection its creed, and 
thereafter the " soundness " of every presidential candidate 
upon the slavery question was the condition of its support. 
The Whig party was never the party of the slave-holder in 
North Carolina, and it was due to this that the Democrats 
were able in 1836 to carry the state for Van Buren,^*' Jack- 
son's chosen successor, though the Whigs elected the gov- 
ernor, this being the first popular election for that office 
ever held in the state. 



** Raleigh Register, Nov. 17, 1835. 

*°Laws of N. C, 183s, Resolutions, p. 119. 
_ ^° Van Buren had given assurances, on inquiry from North Caro- 
lina Democrats, that he opposed any interference with slavery in 
the District of Columbia. See 50 Niles' Register, 126. 



CHAPTER III. 

Whig Supremacy: 1835-1850. 

When the revolted province of North Carolina framed 
her constitution in 1776 the constitution makers, regarding 
the counties as equal in population, accorded to each the 
right to elect a senator and two commoners to the General 
Assembly.^ This arrangement was not inequitable at that 
date. The swamp and marsh region which fringed the 
coast and shut in Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds was 
divided into very large and thinly settled counties. To the 
westward the swamp region gave place to a rich alluvial 
district w^iich was free from the ills of the lower area 
and, though extending beyond the upper limits of - tide- 
water, was in easy communication with the sea by means 
of the great rivers, the Roanoke, the Tar, the Neuse, and 
the Cape Fear. This area, containing the bulk of the popu- 
lation of the state, was divided into counties of normal and 
convenient size. These small but populous and wealthy 
counties made up an irregular double tier which extended 
across the state from north to south approximately parallel 
to the general coast line. Behind these, to the westward, 
began the back-country, where the population again grew 
sparse and the counties correspondingly large. 

As these large back counties began to fill up they grew 
dissatisfied with the basis of representation. Increase in 
population did not bring an increase in representatives as 
long as representation was based on counties. To split up 
the over-large western counties as their population increased 
was the natural course for the state government to pursue. 
But the central eastern counties, in control by virtue of their 

^ In addition, six towns, four in the east and two in the west, were 
each given the right to elect a borough member to the lower house. 

60 




w 



H U 



u a: 



O tS 



505] JVhig Supremacy. 61 

number, refused to assent to any plan whereby their exist- 
ing- advantage would be destroyed. Hence an eastern and 
a western party came into being. An imaginary line, defi- 
nitely fixed in the minds of the people of both sections, ran 
across the state somewhat to the west of Raleigh,- dividing 
the east from the west as effectively as a natural barrier 
would have done. Dissimilar interests, opposite purposes, 
and often hostile feelings animated the two sections and 
urged them to a prolonged contest.''' 

A method of correcting the inequalities of representation 
other than by a division of counties was to reform the state 
constitution in such a manner as to permit the state to be 
divided into districts according to population and taxation 
and to make these districts the basis of representation. The 
west urged such a reform as early as 1790,* and con- 
tinued to press the movement from that date. At each suc- 
cessive annual Assembly petitions were presented for a re- 
form in the constitution or for a just division of the western 
counties.^ The east as constantly refused to make any con- 
cession. By 181 8 the inequalities in representation had 
grown so great that the demand of the west for reform 
became a threatening danger. The use of force was freely 
discussed and revolution as a last resource, though depre- 
cated, was not counted among the improbabilities of the 
strained situation.*^ The west, containing twenty-eight 
counties, had a majority of the population of the state, but 
the east, made up of thirty-four counties, had a fixed ma- 
jority in the General Assembly. 

In the legislative term of 1819-1820 the western members 

' Cf. Speech of Wm. Gaston in N. C. Constitutional Convention 
of 1835. Debates, 124, et seq. 

'The differences between the east and the west after 1789 were 
in reality a continuation of the old pre-Revolutionary ill-feeling that 
had culminated in the Regulators' War of 1769-71. The basis of 
representation adopted by the constitution makers in 1776 gave the 
controversy a new lease of life. 

*N. C. State Records, XXI, 1052. 

"Raleigh Register, Dec. 3, 1799. 

' Cf. " Senator of Lincoln County " in Raleigh Register, Jan. 8, 
1819. 



62 State Rights in North Carolina. [506 

made a determined effort to induce the east to come to 
equitable terms. The demand for a reform in representa- 
tion was coupled with demands for the popular election of 
the governor and for general reform in the revenue and 
judicial systems. Debate upon the resolutions'' embodying 
the western plan of reform occupied nearly the whole of the 
legislative term.^ The main position of the eastern mem- 
bers, as developed in the debates, was that a just and re- 
publican principle did not require that numbers alone should 
govern ; that one of the most important ends of government 
was the protection of private property ; that counting prop- 
erty in slaves,^ the east was decidedly the wealthier of 
the two sections and, therefore, the existing mode of rep- 
resentation operated justly. This argument served to defer 
concession, the reform resolutions being defeated by a 
strictly sectional vote. 

Despairing of legislative concession the western members 
of the Assembly determined, in 1822, to appeal directly to 
the people. Accordingly, after a caucus meeting they is- 
sued a call for a popular convention to meet in November 
of the following year to consider the question of reform. 
Extra-legal in its origin, this convention met at Raleigh 
upon the date designated, delegates from twenty-four of the 
twenty-eight western counties being present.^" No dele- 
gates appeared from the east. The ten days' session of the 
western convention accomplished but poorly the purposes 
for which it met. The main purpose had been to impress 
the east with the strength of the reform movement, but 
this object was almost wholly defeated by the development 
of a lack of harmony among the delegates present. 

' N. C. Senate Journal, Dec. 2, 1819. 

' These debates are published in Raleigh Register, beginning Dec. 
10, 1819, and continuing for several months in its weekly issues. 

° Slaves were not, however, at this time, or ever afterward, taxed 
as property. A poll-tax of 50 cents on all slaves between the ages 
of 12 and 50 years was the greatest tax ever levied on this species 
of property in North Carolina. 

" The proceedings of this interesting convention appear in Raleigh 
Register, Nov. 14, 1823, and Nov. 21, 1823. Also in Raleigh Star 
of same dates. 



507] Whig Supremacy. 63 

A committee of five, appointed to draft amendments to 
be presented by the convention to the people, found great 
difficulty in reflecting the will of the delegates as to the 
kind of reform needed. The extreme western or moun- 
tainous counties, in which there were practically no slaves, 
wished free white population to form the basis of repre- 
sentation. The middle western counties, contiguous to the 
east and already large slave-holding counties, wished fed- 
eral numbers to form the basis. The will of the latter pre- 
vailed in the committee, and the amendment relative to rep- 
resentation proposed that four thousand of federal popula- 
tion should be the unit of representation in the commons 
and ten thousand the unit in the senate. By this arrange- 
ment, should the state subsequently adopt the measure, the 
mountain counties would gain nothing, the east would lose 
nothing, the slave counties of the middle west would become 
identical in interest with the east and further reform be 
put off indefinitely. In the effort of the middle western 
counties to convince the east of their conservatism the 
amendments proposed^^ failed to include the abolition of 
the rotten boroughs or the popular election of the governor, 
measures for which the whole west had formerly made 
demands. 

A second committee prepared statistical facts relative to 
the counties represented in the convention and those unrep- 
resented and reported as follows : 

Free population of entire state 433.912 

Free population of represented counties 233.933 

Free population of unrepresented counties ^99:979 

Majority of represented counties 33-954 

Federal numbers in whole state 556-695 

Federal numbers in unrepresented counties 284.264 

Federal numbers in represented counties 272.431 

Difference in favor of unrepresented counties 11-833 

The committee further reported that the amount of taxes 

"Raleigh Register, Nov. 21, 1823, contains all the amendments 
recommended. After that relative to representation, biennial in- 
stead of annual assemblies was perhaps the most important. 



64 State Rights in North Carolina. [508 

paid by the counties unrepresented in the convention was, 
approximately, $10,000 more than that paid by the counties 
represented.^- Hence the west had failed to prove its case, 
unless it was granted that free population should be the 
basis of representation — an assumption which the east had 
long since denied. Having adopted the reports of the 
various committees, and recommending a constitutional con- 
vention to the people, the western convention adjourned. 

The succeeding General Assembly promptly refused to 
call the convention recommended or in any way to further 
the suggestions of the western convention.^'^ This action 
by the Assembly was tantamount to a declaration by the 
east that it would not meet the overtures of the middle 
western counties nor concede them a share in the control 
of the state. They were forced, therefore, to remain united 
with the mountain counties. The issue was accordingly 
kept alive, the fight immediately renewed^* and continued 
without intermission for another decade. 

Already the two sections had attached themselves to 
opposing leaders in national politics. In 1824 the west sup- 
ported Jackson for the presidency and the east supported 
Crawford. In 1828, when the east adopted Jackson as its 
candidate, the west grew lukewarm in his cause and by 1832 
was definitely aligned with the new Whig party under the 
leadership of Henry Clay. Under the banners of Whig and 
Democrat the fight between the sections over constitutional 
reform now drew toward a conclusion favorable to the west. 

At the election of assemblymen in August, 1833, the 
western or Whig party opened polls in thirty-three counties 
for a record of the people's votes for or against a conven- 
tion. This polling was extra-legal and was conducted only 
in the western counties and in several detached eastern 
counties which had been converted to reform. But the re- 

" The population statistics were based on the U. S. census report 
of 1820 and the tax statistics on the state comptroller's report for 
the same year. 

"Journal of N. C. Gen. Assembly, 1823, 128. 

" Carolina Watchman, June 15, 1824. 



509] Whig Supremacy. 65 

suit was 30,000 votes for, and only 1000 against, the con- 
vention. This demand for reform was too loud to be ig- 
nored. When the Assembly met in November a joint com- 
mittee of the two houses reported that, in its opinion, had 
polls been opened throughout the state and under the sanc- 
tion of law a large majority of the people would have cast 
their votes for a convention. ^^ The committee, therefore, 
recommended constitutional amendment and suggested that 
either of two methods might be employed : ( i ) a conven- 
tion of the people, (2) legislative amendment. But of these 
two methods the committee, a majority of whom were east- 
ern members, recommended legislative amendment, the re- 
sults afterward to be submitted to the people.^'' The legis- 
lative method would place constitutional amendment in the 
hands of the friends of the constitution, /. e., the east, which 
had control of the legislature. The western members, how- 
ever, refused to hear anything of this plan and continued 
to demand a convention. In consequence there was a dead- 
lock and the session closed without agreement.^' 

The Raleigh Register, favorably situated for accurate 
observation, summed up the evil state of North Carolina 
politics in the following mild terms ■}^ " The members of 
the North Carolina Assembly are split into factions under 
the well-known standards of the ' East ' and the ' West,' 
the ' Roanoke ' and the ' Cape Fear,' and even when a reve- 
nue bill is to be considered their votes depend very much 
upon the circumstance from what c[uarter of the state its 
mover comes. Unaccustomed to consider subjects upon 
their merits, the crowd look only for their leaders. If the 
mover of a measure comes from the East the opposition of 
the West is assured, and vice versa." Such a condition of 
affairs, according to the Register, had wrought distraction 

" N. C. Legislative Documents, 1833, 94. 

'*The Constitution of 1776 provided no plan for its amendment, 
hence the choice of methods. 

" Journal N. C. General Assembly, 1834, 244. Final postponement 
was carried by only four votes in the commons. 

"Raleigh Register, June 11, 1833. 



66 State Rights in North Carolina. [S^o 

and confusion in every branch of the government and com- 
pletely clogged political energy and progress. 

But a very remarkable man, David Lowrie Swain, was 
now governor of North Carolina and determined upon re- 
form. He was born in Buncombe County — the very heart 
of the rugged mountainous area of North Carolina. His 
father was a New Englander who had settled in Georgia and 
later removed to western North Carolina. ^° Without early 
educational advantages other than the little mountain hamlet 
of Asheville afforded, the younger Swain was a practicing 
lawyer at 22 years of age, a member of the General Assem- 
bly from his twenty-fourth to his twenty-ninth year — one 
year excepted — a judge of the Superior Courts at 30, 
governor at 31, and president of the State .University 
at 35. Swain owed his rapid advance in political prefer- 
ment to his intuitive understanding and appreciation of the 
qualities of his fellowmen and to the confidence with which 
he inspired them. In every sense he was a man of the 
people, and though sprung from the west he was equally 
trusted by the east. Inclined toward Whig principles, he 
was nevertheless elected governor by the Assembly in 1832, 
1833, and 1834, and held himself sufficiently neutral be- 
tween the sections to bring about the attempt at agreement 
made in the legislature in 1833. The failure of this plan 
aroused him to further effort and his message to the Assem- 
bly, November 17, 1834, began a new epoch in the political 
life of the state. Rising above sectional and party strife, 
he dealt with the subject of reform as a means to rein- 
vigorate every department of the state's activity. He re- 
viewed the sectional controversy from its origin in colonial 
times down to the present, and pointed out the utter impos- 
sibility of wise or liberal legislation until such conditions 
were ended.-" 

Governor Swain's position, together with the force de- 

" Wheeler's Reminiscences, 57-58, for facts of Swain's early life. 
Also Wheeler's Historical Sketches, II, 53. 

^"This reform message of Gov. Swain is published in 47 Niles' 
Register, 221, and in all N. C. State papers of date. 



5ii] Whig Supremacy. 6y 

rived from Mangum's thorough organization of the western 
or Whig party, now caused the east to give way, and in 
January, 1835, a convention bill was carried.^^ The act 
provided that a popular vote should be taken on the question 
whether a majority of the voters should approve the con- 
vention ; then the governor should fix a day for the election 
of delegates and a day for the convention. The same docu- 
ment further defined the limits of the convention's power in 
regard to representation, providing that the senate should 
be made to consist of not less than thirty-four nor more 
than fifty members, to be chosen by district according to 
public taxes, and the commons of not less than ninety nor 
more than one hundred and twenty members, apportioned 
by districts according to federal population. Thus, after 
all, the vital question of representation was determined by 
the east and in such a manner that the privileges of the 
whole slave area remained unaffected. Nothing would be 
lost by this section in the change from the county basis to 
federal population basis, for it possessed the bulk of the 
slaves. In fact there would be a gain in that the limits of 
the east would be extended further westward and made to 
include all the slave counties of the state. 

When, however, the popular vote-- was taken on the 
convention question in April every western county save one 
gave majorities for the convention and every eastern county 
gave majorities against it; but the total majority for the 
convention was 5856 votes. The election of delegates fol- 
lowed a few weeks later.^^ The convention assembled in 
Raleigh, July 4, and remained in session until July 11. The 
aged Nathaniel Macon came forth from his retirement to 
act as chairman and to watch over the destinies of his state 
while the younger generation laid hands on its constitution. 
The reforms made by the convention of 1835 ^^V be 

^ Public Acts of N. C, 1834, 35, Chap. I, part I. 

" Official returns, vote b}' counties, N. C. Standard, April 24, 1835. 

"^ Two delegates from each county composed the convention, being 
elected on the same basis as the members of the commons. This 
assured a majority in the convention to the east. 



68 State Rights in North Carolina. [512 

briefly summarized. The election of governor was given to 
the people and the term of office increased to two years. 
Assemblies should meet biennially instead of annually. 
Sheriffs were henceforth to be elected by the people of the 
respective counties. Religious tests for office-holders and 
borough representation were abolished. Free negroes were 
disfranchised. The senate was thereafter to consist of fifty 
members and the commons of one hundred and twenty, 
chosen according to the provisions of the enabling act 
already noted. 

The question of representation was now settled appar- 
ently to the general satisfaction of the whole slave area. 
Speaking broadly and disregarding the Quaker strongholds 
in Randolph, Chatham and Guilford, the slave area now 
included the whole state east of the foot of the Blue Ridge 
Mountains. If, after old scores were forgotten, sectional 
strife should be renewed the issue would be between the 
strong slave-holding section and the weak mountain counties. 
Yet, in 1835, it was confidently expected that mining and 
manufacturing would cause the spread of slavery into the 
mountains.^* But this prophecy was never fulfilled to any 
large extent,^^ and twenty years later the mountain counties, 
in political combination with the marsh counties of the 
Sound region, were ineffectually demanding free white man- 
hood suffrage as the basis of representation. 

Governor Spaight in November laid the amended consti- 
tution before the people. The counties on opposite sides 
of the old sectional line, totally unused to agreement on any 
question, voted according to habit, every western county 
giving a majority for ratification and every eastern county, 
save one, a majority for rejection. The total majority for 
ratification, however, was 5165, being practically the same 
by which the convention had been called. The new or 

"Debates, N. C. Constitution of 1835, 139. 

^ Each successive census marked a slight increase in the small 
number of slaves in the mountain region of North Carolina ; but 
they were never sufficiently numerous to influence the political views 
of the people. 



5 1 3] Whig Supremacy. 69 

amended constitution went into operation at the beginning 
of 1836 and in August the first popular election for gover- 
nor was held under its provisions. The result was a victory 
for the Whig or western party. 

Though the Whig party now assumed the responsibility 
which had rested in the hands of the old anti-federal or 
state rights Republican party since 1793, it had as yet devel- 
oped no principles antagonistic to state rights doctrine. 
Indeed for the first few years of its existence in North 
Carolina the Whig party was known by its adherents as 
the State Rights Whig party. But the application of a 
name did not enable it to usurp the place of the old Repub- 
lican — now the Democratic — party, which in the minds of 
the people was always identified with strict construction 
principles. Moreover, the affiliation of the local with the 
national Whig party soon made the profession of strict con- 
struction principles inconsistent for the North Carolina 
Wliigs. The national part}^, swayed by its stronger north- 
ern section, more and more tended toward liberal construc- 
tion. To be strict constructionists in state and liberal con- 
structionists in national politics placed the local Whigs in 
an equivocal position of which the Democrats were not slow 
to take advantage. 

The Whigs retained their hard-won supremacy for fifteen 
years, however. Their power to do so was derived from 
two main sources : first, the perfection in organization 
attained in the struggle for reform; second, the adroitness 
with which the leaders reconciled the inconsistencies of their 
local and national politics. Both of these factors were 
essential to supremacy, for the period of the Whig regime, 
1835 to 1850, was the period in which the national Whig 
party developed strong tendencies toward old federalist 
principles. It was the period of the struggle over the re- 
charter of the United States Bank ; the period in which 
Texas was annexed and the Mexican War begun and con- 
cluded, in the train of which came the renewal of the con- 
troversy over slavery extension. Each of these issues 



70 State Rights in North Carolina. LS H 

included constitutional points upon which the national par- 
ties could and did disagree. But this privilege of disa- 
greement, at least in so far as slavery was included, was 
denied the local parties in North Carolina. The political 
edifice of the local Whigs, therefore, rested upon an inse- 
cure foundation from the date of its erection in 1835 until 
it toppled to its ruin in 1850 during the excitement atten- 
dant upon the second great slavery compromise. 

The local Democrats knew well the potency of the argu- 
ment against their opponents — that danger to slavery lurked 
in the councils of the northern Whigs."'' The North Caro- 
lina Whigs, therefore, from the date of their supremacy, 
were forced to condemn with Democratic vehemence the 
evident tendencies of their northern partymen. The recep- 
tion of the Vermont Resolutions in 1837, asserting the right 
and duty of the federal government to abolish slavery in the 
District of Columbia, afforded such an instance.-^ Both 
parties alike applauded Calhoun's speeches against the re- 
ception of petitions by Congress for abolition in the District, 
and both as heartily condemned Adams for their advocacy.-^ 

When the demand for the annexation of Texas grew 
strong in all the South and Henry Clay, the great Whig 
oracle, opposed it on the ground that acquisition of new 
territory was but sowing the seeds of strife over slavery, 
the North Carolina Whig press, ignoring Clay's attitude, 
pointed out the peculiar importance of Texas to the slave- 
holding states, and declared that with the acquisition aboli- 
tion in the District or elsewhere might forever be set at 
defiance by the South ; in fine, that " the annexation of 
Texas is essential to the future safety and repose of the 
Southern States of this Confederacy."-'' The Democrats 
themselves were not more ardent for Texas. The differ- 
ence in attitude of the two local parties lay in the fact that, 
for party purposes, southern Whigs felt it necessary to con- 

'" Standard, March 21, 1837. 

"Raleigh Register, May 9, 1837. 

"■^Star, May 21, 1837. Raleigh Register, March 28, 1837. 

'"Star, Aug. 23, 1837. 



515] Whig Supremacy. 71 

cede to their northern alhes that annexation ought not to 
be accompHshed at the risk of war with Mexico. The re- 
fusal of the United States Senate to ratify the annexation 
scheme of 1838 postponed the question for a time, giving 
place in popular interest to the presidential election of 1840. 

Despite his declared opposition to the annexation of 
Texas, Clay was decidedly the favorite of the North Caro- 
lina Whigs for the party nomination in 1840.^" When, 
however. General Wm. H. Harrison received the nomina- 
tion instead, his candidacy soon awakened unusual enthu- 
siasm in North Carolina, as elsewhere. In the general 
tumult accompanying this campaign, unique in American 
politics, party principles were well-nigh forgotten. Van 
Buren, Democratic candidate for reelection, w^as held 
equally responsible with Jackson, his predecessor and pa- 
tron, for the financial crisis of 1837, for perversion of the 
federal patronage, and for the general executive usurpa- 
tions of the last two administrations.^^ The national Whig 
platform, demanding reform, was especially congenial to the 
local Whigs because their party had come to power on that 
issue in state politics. 

The gubernatorial contest in August, 1840, was a decided 
Whig victory and foretold success in November. John 
Motley Morehead, with internal improvements as the issue, 
was elected over Romulus M. Saunders, the Democratic 
candidate, by a majority double that of the Whig success of 
1838.^^ The vote plotted by counties showed that the Whig 
party was coming to enjoy the confidence of a number of 
eastern counties. The old solidarity of the sections was 
beginning to be broken up by the alliance of the coast 
counties with the west. The Whigs began to feel firmly in- 
trenched. Their confidence seemed still further warranted 
when the results of the presidential election in the state 
were known. Harrison electors had been chosen by a ma- 

^° Raleigh Register, Dec. 10, 1838, and July 6, 1839. 
=^Cf. Schouler, Hist, of U. S., IV, 34i- 
^-Raleigh Register, Sept. 8, 1840. 



72 State Rights in North Carolina. [5^6 

jority of 12,594, the total vote polled being the largest in 
the history of the state.'"*^ Harrison's overwhelming vic- 
tory throughout the country seemed to the North Carolina 
Whigs a guarantee of stability and future harmony for the 
party. ^* 

The task of conserving the power now held by the Whigs 
in the state was to tax the efforts of the able Whig leaders 
who had created it. The foremost of these leaders were 
Willie Person Mangum, William Alexander Graham, 
George Edmund Badger, and Thomas Lanier Clingman. 
They did not force the state into a position of national 
prominence, for this was not the genius of her people, but 
they held her to the Whig allegiance during a decade in 
which the real interests of the South seemed to be repre- 
sented by the Democratic party. Their position was a 
difficult one. The problem before them was, on the one 
hand, to preserve the unity of the northern and the southern 
sections of the party, and on the other, as practical politi- 
cians, to inspire the local Whigs with confidence in the 
national Whig policy. In the solution of this problem three 
of these leaders, Mangum, Graham, and Badger, together 
with numbers of their followers, caught a spirit of nation- 
alism which, in the succeeding decade, came into violent 
conflict with the spirit of state individualism upon which 
the South relied when she felt her institutions threatened. 

Of the triumvirate composed of Mangum, Graham, and 
Badger, the first two were in the United States Senate and 
Badger had recently been appointed secretary of the navy 
by President Harrison. Mangum had been the longest in 
public life and was regarded as the Nestor of the local 
party. As the leader of the western party he forced his 
election to the United States Senate in 1831. With a 
watchful interest in state politics he then arrayed him- 
self as an opponent to the personal government of Presi- 
dent Jackson, and sought to crystallize what local sentiment 

"^ Ofificial returns compared. Raleigh Register, Nov. 27, 1840. 
'* Ibid., same date. 



517] Whig Supremacy. 73 

existed against Benton's Expunging Resolutions and against 
the legislative practice of instructing Senators. In 1836, 
however, he failed of reelection because he had refused to 
follow legislative instructions on " Expunging," and entered 
the Senate again only when, in 1840, the Whigs had secured 
control of both branches of the North Carolina Assembly. 
Upon the death of Harrison and with Tyler's elevation 
to the chief magistracy Mangum was elected permanent 
president of the Senate and served through the term of the 
administration.^^ Graham, like Mangum, was from the 
west, both being residents of the same county.^*' Both 
were slave-holders and in every sense identified with the 
slavery regime, yet both were, and remained, thoroughly 
opposed to the radical tendencies of the South on the ques- 
tion of state rights. 

The North Carolina Whigs were in thorough sympathy 
with the purpose of the national party to recharter the 
United States Bank and restore the country to a sound and 
uniform currency. The state had suffered its full share in 
the crippling of the local banks during the financial strin- 
gency of 1838, and the people for the most part attributed 
the result to Jackson's destruction of the United States 
Bank.^' Eight of the state's congressional delegation in 
1841 were bank men and five were anti-bank men. It is 
probable that these members represented the proportional 
strength of the two parties. When Clay's first bank bill 
was under discussion in June, Graham and Mangum both 
stated in the Senate that North Carolina Whigs were unan- 
imous for the recharter of the bank, and that many of the 
other party were favorable, provided it could be done with- 
out their cooperation."* 

When Tyler vetoed the first bank bill brought forward 
by Clay and a rupture of the party was imminent. North 
Carolina Whigs continued to hope for some means to pro- 

^ Wheeler, II, 336. Historical Sketches. 

'' Orange. 

" Raleigh Register, April 13, 1841. 

'* Congressional Globe, June 24 and June 25, 1841. 



74 State Rights in North Carolina. \S^^ 

mote harmony.^" But when the second veto followed and it 
was seen that Tyler must be thrown overboard, no sign of 
hesitancy was apparent. Badger, with the full approval of 
the local party ,*° together with the remainder of the cabinet, 
Webster excepted, at once resigned. Mangum, from his 
position of influence in the Senate, directed the formal 
caucus at Washington which resulted in the Whig " Mani- 
festo " that read Tyler out of the party.*^ 

The break with Tyler did not affect the local situation. 
The Whigs showed a unanimity quite equal to that claimed 
by Mangum and Graham in the Senate and were in hearty 
support of Clay upon his issue with the administration. In 
the following year the Kentuckian's flag was nailed to the 
mast. But just before the national nominating convention 
in 1844 Clay visited the state and made several speeches 
which, though received with enthusiasm by his large au- 
diences,*- nevertheless had a decided tendency to decrease 
the number of his followers. In his speeches and in a 
letter to the general public dated at Raleigh*^ he took the 
ground that Texas should not be immediately annexed. 
The leading Whig journals in the state, however, handled 
the subject with care and caution, expressing the desire to 
see Texas added to the Union, though not at the expense 
of the honor of the country.** When Clay was nominated 
it was inevitable that his position on the Texas question 
should alienate the most considerable portion of his support 
in the South. In the summer the outcome in North Caro- 
lina seemed very doubtful. The gubernatorial election 
occurred in August, resulting in a victory for Graham, 
though by a majority reduced to one-half of that secured by 
Governor Morehead in 1842. 

In November it was found that the Whig margin was 

^® Raleigh Register, Aug. 20, 1841, and Star, Aug. 25, 1841. 
*" Raleigh Register, Sept. 17, 1841. 
" Benton, Thirty Years' View, II, 357. 
"Star, April 17. 1844. 

^'66 Niles' Register, 439, and National Intelligencer, April 27, 
1844. 
"Raleigh Register, May 3, 1844, and Star, May i, 1844. 



519] Whig Supremacy. 75 

still further reduced. Clay carried the state by 3945 votes 
only, a majority equal approximately to one-third of that 
given Harrison in 1840; and yet an even larger total vote 
had been cast in 1844 than in 1840.*^ South of the Potomac 
onl}^ Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina were now 
in the Whig column. The other southern states that had 
been Whig in 1840 had, under the stress of the demand for 
Texas, transferred their allegiance to the Democracy. *° 
The strong organization of the Whigs in North Carolina 
and the personal popularity of the candidate, notwithstand- 
ing his attitude toward Texas, saved the state to the Whigs 
at this time when the opposing candidate, Polk, stood for 
the enlargement of the slavery area. 

After the removal of the fear of losing Texas*^ the North 
Carolina Whig leaders believed the opportunity had come 
for regaining their lost strength and for welding the whole 
Whig party into unity. To this end they firmly supported 
the policy of a protective tariff. By 1846 the state nomi- 
nating convention was fully developed, thus making pos- 
sible a much clearer insight into party principles. At these 
conventions each party spread its platform before the peo- 
ple in sets of printed resolutions which in themselves are 
instructive political documents. Since the election of a 
Whig governor in 1836 and the beginning of the Whig- 
regime the tariff or protective policy had entered into all 
the political contests of North Carolina.*^ The tariff act 
of 1842 and the protective policy generally had been fully 
and freely discussed from the mountains to the sea. The 
result had been that the party favoring a tariff which would 
yield sufficient revenue, and at the same time so discrimi- 
nate as effectually to protect the manufacturing and working 

^^The Ofificial Returns, Raleigh Register, Nov. 24, 1840, and Nov. 
19, 1844. 

** Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi had cast their electoral 
votes for Harrison in 1840. 

" President Tyler secured the annexation of Texas four days 
before he gave place to Polk. 

*' Cf. Speech of Alfred Dockery, of North Carolina, July 28, 1846. 
Cong. Globe, i sess., 29th Cong., 1160. 



y^ State Rights in North Carolina. [520 

interests of the country, had in each instance since 1836 
elected the governor. It had been alleged in 1840 that if a 
Whig president was elected the protective policy would be 
fastened upon the country ; yet the Whig candidate received 
the vote of the state. The death of Harrison and the trou- 
bles which arose in the Whig ranks upon the accession of 
Tyler produced apathy and despondency in the Whig party 
here as elsewhere. Hence, though the Whigs elected the 
governor in 1842, the Democrats gained a temporary ma- 
jority in the legislature and in that year elected William 
H. Haywood as United States Senator to succeed William 
A. Graham. Haywood entered the Senate as a Democrat 
in full accord with his party. But in 1846, when the Polk 
tariff act was passed to reduce the Whig tariff of 1842, 
Haywood, believing that the Whig measure was best for 
the country, resigned his seat rather than vote for the re- 
duction bill.*'' Naturally the Senator was repudiated by his 
party ; but his action was indicative of the strength of pro- 
tective sentiment in North Carolina. George E. Badger 
was forthwith elected by the Whig legislature to fill Hay- 
wood's place. Badger, like his colleague Mangum, favored 
a tariff which would make the United States industrially 
independent. The state Whig convention of 1846 declared 
for a higher tariff on imports, " a tariff which furnishes 
incidental production to commerce, agriculture and manu- 
factures," rather than that the revenue should be increased 
by direct taxation.^" 

As an agricultural and slave state the position of North 
Carolina upon the tariff may very properly be termed un- 
wise ; but an examination of the facts makes it impossible 
to conclude that her attitude on the tariff question was 
altogether, or even in large part, the result of a desire to 
conciliate the northern Whigs. Undoubtedly such a desire 
had weight. But there had also long existed in the state, 

*" Congressional Globe, ist sess., 29th Cong., 1141. 
°'' Raleigh Register, May 15, 1846. Proceedings of the Whig 
State Convention. 



52 1] Whig Supremacy. yy 

especially in the west, a belief that the immense water power 
of the rivers could and one day would be utilized for the 
growth of large manufacturing interests. ^^ Yet it must 
not be supposed that the North Carolina Whigs were favor- 
able to an outright protective tariff — one in which the reve- 
nue feature was lost sight of or made distinctly secondary. 
Such a tariff was not a part of the national Whig policy 
during the fifteen years of Whig supremacy in the Senate. 

The attitude of the North Carolina Whigs on the subject 
of the United States Bank and on internal improvements 
has already been noted as in full accord with the national 
Whig policy. Hence only one great issue, that of slavery 
restriction, remained upon which the state party could not 
act in harmony with the national party and still retain su- 
premacy. This 'issue was now looming into the greatest 
prominence, and if the southern Whig leaders failed to 
impress upon the whole party the importance of conserva- 
tism, then the whole Whig fabric would be destroyed. 

Already there were causes for distrust of the trend of 
national Whig polic}^ That a large addition of territory 
on the southwest would result from the war with Mexico 
begun by the Democratic administration was a foregone 
conclusion. That the northern Whigs purposed that the 
addition should not be an enlargement of the area of slavery 
was shown in the terms of the Wilmot Proviso introduced 
into Congress in 1845.'''- 

Wlien, in 1846, the Wilmot Proviso was attracting its 
first considerable attention, North Carolina was in the midst 
of an exciting gubernatorial election and gave little heed 
to external politics until it was over. Graham, the Whig 
candidate for reelection, had tactfully avoided national 
issues in the campaign and had emphasized such state ques- 

" Carolina Watchman, May 17, 1846. 

''"The object of the Proviso was to prohibit the introduction of 
slavery into any part of the territory to be acquired from Mexico. 
Northern Whigs, aided by northern anti-slavery Democrats, pushed 
the measure through the House in 1846, and in consequence the 
whole South was soon awakened to its danger. See Benton, Thirty 
Years' View, II, 694. 



78 State Rights in North Carolina. [522 

tions as education, better highways, and railroads,^^ and 
the Proviso received little attention from either party. 
Graham secured his election by a much larger majority 
than in 1844. 

Not until February, 1847, did an expression come from 
a Whig source that might be taken as an authoritative ex- 
pression of the Whig party sentiment relative to the Wilmot 
Proviso, now so persistently urged. The Raleigh Regis- 
ter,^* the official mouthpiece of the party, now spoke in no 
uncertain tone. Definitely setting forth the breach of sym- 
pathy between the northern and southern divisions of the 
party, it said :^^ " The unanimity with which the members 
of both parties from the non-slaveholding states have sup- 
ported this slavery restriction proviso convinces us that 
we have no right to expect justice at the hands of either. 
It behooves the whole South, then, to cast about, and decid- 
edly and unflinchingly resist any and every project which 
must inevitably tend to advance the unholy and mischievous 
purposes of those who have openly and willingly violated 
the Missouri Compromise. ... It is time for party distinc- 
tions to sleep, and for the South to present a united front." 
The rank and file of North Carolina Whigs were already 
as ardent supporters of the war with Mexico as were the 
Democrats, but the Whig leaders were more mindful of 
the danger of wrecking the whole party upon the rock of 
the Proviso. Senator Badger's plan was one of prevention 
rather than cure. He opposed the whole plan of acquiring 
Mexican territory by any method whatsoever. '* Suppose," 
he said, " the territory now sought be acquired, how shall 
we dispose of it? How shall we escape the agitation of 
the slave question — an agitation which, come when it will, 
must shake the Union from its centre, alienate one portion 
of our people from another, and either destroy our national 
existence or leave it without the support of mutual confi- 

'' Raleigh Register, July 28, 1846. 
"Raleigh Register, Feb. 28, 1847. 
"^ Congressional Globe, March 23, 1847. 



523] Whig Supremacy. 79 

dence or mutual kindness."^*' Mr. Clingman, in the House, 
was endeavoring to induce the northern Whigs to meet the 
southern wing of the party on some middle ground. In 
December he made a notable speech" to the House in which 
he attacked the abolitionists of the North and the disunion- 
ists of the South with equal vehemence. He urged the 
northern Whigs to agree to a division of the prospective 
territory by an extension of the Missouri Compromise line 
westward to the sea. Any conclusion, however, seemed yet 
afar off. 

When Congress met in December, 1847, the Whigs had 
a majority in the House of Representatives. Accordingly, 
a resolution was passed which declared that the war with 
Mexico was unconstitutionally and unnecessarily begun by 
President Polk. Four North Carolina Representatives, 
among whom was Clingman, voted for the resolution. 
Two others were absent who would have voted affirma- 
tively,^^ the six making up the Whig delegation. Senators 
Badger and Mangum also favored such a declaration. 
Though technically this declaration may have expressed an 
historical fact, its support by the North Carolinians was 
clearly a part of their policy of conciliation and ingratia- 
tion, used for the purpose of promoting party harmony. 
The state Whig convention of 1848 registered this edict of 
the leaders and reinforced it by a declaration that the local 
party was entirely opposed to wresting forcibly from 
Mexico any part of her territory.^" 

This spirit of self-righteousness manifested by the North 
Carolina Whigs, though clearly meant for party purposes 
and as a means to an end in practical politics, laid them 
open to an attack from the Democrats on the score of 
recreancy to southern interests and southern rights. The 
Democratic convention characterized the resolution as giv- 
ing aid and comfort to the enemy. The resolution, yoked 

^^ Congressional Globe, March 23, 1847. 

" Speeches and Writings of Thos. L. Clingman, 196. 

"■' Standard. Jan. 12, 1848. 

'"Raleigh Register, Feb. 25, 1848. 



8o State Rights in North Carolina. [524 

with the Wilmot Proviso, was ahnost more than the local 
Whigs could bear in the way of party adversity. Un- 
doubtedly they were in a precarious positon. Totally 
opposed in principle to the spirit animating the great body 
of northern Whigs upon the subject of slavery extension, 
yet dependent upon harmony for its existence, the party 
found increasing difficulty in maintaining itself. But the 
power of its leaders and the excellence of its organization 
again elected a Whig governor in 1848; and these factors, 
reinforced by the fear of the Democrats that Lewis Cass, 
the Democratic nominee for president, was not sufficiently 
pro-slavery, placed the state again and for the third time 
successfully in the Whig column, giving its vote to the suc- 
cessful candidate, General Zachary Taylor. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Slavery Agitation from 1850 to i860: Parties. 

At the beg-inning of Zachary Taylor's administration, 
March 5, 1849, no conclusion had been reached by Congress 
as to slavery in the territories. Even before the signing of 
the Mexican Treaty, by which in 1848 a vast southwestern 
territory was added to the Union, the people of the United 
States had begun to grow excited over the probable pas- 
sage of the Wilmot Proviso, the object of which was to 
exclude slavery from the grant. The South began to inaug- 
urate measures to prevent such congressional action, the 
method most frequently employed being the passage of 
resolutions by state legislatures. These resolutions usually 
instructed congressional delegations, besides serving as an 
authoritative expression of the will of the people. 

Early in January, 1849, a set of resolutions on slavery 
extension were introduced by the Democrats in the popular 
branch of the North Carolina General Assembly. The 
fourth resolution declared that the enactment bv Congress 
of any law which should directly or indirectly deprive the 
citizens of any of the states of the right of emigrating with 
their slave property into any of the territories of the United 
States and of exercising ownership over the same while in 
said territories would be the use of power contrary to the 
true meaning and spirit of the Constitution. ^ The Demo- 
crats continued to urge such resolutions during the session ; 
but the Whigs, with a majority in both branches of the 
Assembly, were unwilling to deny the constitutionality of 
congressional prohibition of slavery in the new territory. 
Senator George E. Badger, the most influential Whig in 
North Carolin a, had recently given his opinion in the United 
' Journal of the North CaroHna House of Commons, Jan. 13 1849 

« 81 



82 State Rights in North Carolina. [526 

States Senate that Congress had full power over slavery in 
the territories.- Mr. Badger's reputation as a constitu- 
tional lawyer was national, and in the state his opinion 
always had great weight. The Whig legislature was dis- 
posed to follow him in admitting that Congress had such 
power, but deprecated its exercise as unwise and unjust. 
Resolutions embodying this view were passed on January 
27, which closed with an admonition to all public servants 
of the state to discount whatever might suggest a suspicion 
that the Union could in any event be abandoned, and to 
repel every attempt to alienate any portion of the country.'' 

The secession spirit was active, however, in all the South, 
while there seemed imminent danger that slavery would be 
shut out of the Mexican grant south of the old Missouri 
Compromise line of 36° and 30'. Secession as a consti- 
tutional right was discussed in the halls of Congress and 
by every political sheet in the country. Southern and 
northern Whigs began to lose the power of common action. 
Representative Foote, of Mississippi, Democratic minority 
leader in Congress, wrote Thomas L. Clingman and other 
Whig Representatives of North Carolina in November, 
1849, asking what position as southern Whigs they would 
assume in case the principle of the Wilmot Proviso, upon 
which the Whig party and the northern Democrats seemed 
about to unite, should, as was probable, come up in the 
congressional session about to begin.* Mr. Clingman, in 
reply, took the ground that existing compromises ought to 
be acquiesced in ; that the exclusion of slavery from all the 
new territory w^ould be a policy entirely revolutionary on 
the part of the general government, and ought to be re- 
sisted. He leaned toward secession as the means of resist- 
ance. 

Mr. Badger, on the contrary, replying to Mr. Webster in 
the Senate, admitted that a state had no constitutional right 

" Speech of Senator Badger. Raleigh Register, Nov. 14, 1848. 

* Resolutions, Laws of North CaroHna, session of 1848-1849. 237. 

* This correspondence is published in the Standard, Nov. 28, 1849. 



527] Slavery Agitation from 18 jo to i860. 83 

to secede from the Union, but claimed that, in point of fact, 
the Union would be broken if the South was driven to ex- 
tremity." The divergence of the views of these two Whig 
leaders began a division in the Whig party in North Caro- 
lina both on the constitutionality of congressional exclusion 
of slavery from the territories and on secession. Badger's 
influence was preponderant,'' however, though Clingman's 
strategic position as Representative of the mountain district, 
a Whig stronghold, soon proved disastrous to the Whig 
ascendancy in the state. 

Pending the settlement of the territorial question by com- 
promise measures, in 1850 North Carolina, in common with 
other southern states, received the invitation of Mississippi 
to meet in a southern convention at Nashville for the pur- 
pose of emphasizing the South 's demand that the Missouri 
Compromise line be extended to the Pacific. Though the 
convention was held, North Carolina sent no delegates and 
took no official notice of its existence, even the state De- 
mocracy considering the proposition premature. Separate 
state action was safest, most dignified, and least menacing.'^ 
A southern convention was to be a last resort, for the 
odium which had attached to the Hartford Convention was 
remembered. 

The Compromise measures of 1850 were expected by the 
Whig party to adjust the sectional differences over slavery 
extension. This result, however, was not attained. The 
Southern Rights Association, under the lead of William L. 
Yancey of Alabama, vehemently denounced the measures,^ 
and the Democratic press was almost unanimous in its 
repudiation. A large portion of the northern people were 

'Peele, W. J., Lives of Distinguished North Carolinians, 220, et 
seq., has Badger's speech in full. Cf. Congressional Globe, 31st 
Cong., 1st sess., 389. 

°Six Whig newspapers supported the views of Clingman and 
were influential in bringing about the Democratic victory in the gu- 
bernatorial election of 1850. The remainder still supported Senator 
Badgers views. See list as compiled by Raleigh Star, Nov 21, 
1848, and Standard, Nov. 21, 1848. 

' Cf. Standard, Nov. 28, 1849. 

* Hodgson, Cradle of the Confederacy, 280. 



84 State Rights in North Carolina. [528 

equally dissatisfied. The excitement attendant upon the 
capture of runaway slaves emphasized the broad differences 
between the views of northern and southern extremists. In 
North Carolina the Democratic party considered the admis- 
sion of California as a free state to be more than a counter- 
balance for the benefits to be derived from the stringent 
fugitive slave law. Likewise, the shadowy rights granted 
to slavery in the remaining territory south of 36° and 30' 
were deemed unsatisfactory and far from permanent." 
Democratic resolutions were oft'ered in the Assembly ex- 
pressing a lack of faith in the whole compromise plan. 
These resolutions proposed an increase of taxes on land 
and polls for the purpose of defending the rights of the 
state when the contingency should arise. ^*^ The Badger 
and Clingman wings of the Whig party had not yet ceased 
to act together and, assisted by a number of conservative 
Democrats, defeated the resolution by a large vote.^^ \\'ith 
the end of the year, however, the long period of Whig con- 
trol came to an end, though the Whig principle of conserva- 
tism was not immediately abandoned by the state. Causes 
as influential as slavery extension were operative in the 
change from a Whig to a Democratic state administration, 
and these make an examination of the political conditions in 
the state here necessary. 

David Settle Reid was chosen governor of Xorth Caro- 
lina in August, 1850, being the first Democratic governor 
ever elected by the people. The state had been under Whig 
rule since the election of governor was given to the people 
by the reformed constitution of 1835. This constitution 
made federal population in the counties the basis for distri- 
bution of the one hundred and twenty members of the house 
of commons and for the election of governor.^- Taxes were 
made the basis for the senate, and voters for senators must 

' Standard. Dec. 17, 1850. 
'"House Journal. 1850-1851. 592. 

" The vote in the house was 82 for and 20 against the resolutions. 
'- Previous to this date, 1850, the General Assembly had elected 
the governors. 



529] Slavery Agitation from iS=,o to i860. 85 

own fiftv acres of land.^'" The constitution was a compro- 
mise between the diverging interests of the slave-holding 
east and the non-slave-holding west, and had been adopted 
bv a strictly sectional vote. The settlement of the question 
of representation had not satisfied the west, but was the best 
attainable at the time. Slave population did not spread 
uniformly over the state. The west found no use for slaves 
in the wooded coves of the mountains or on the thin lands of 
the eastern slope. The white population of the west was also 
much less stable than that of the east. ^^len kept constantly 
pushing along the mountain's foot to the newer and richer 
lands of the southwest, while many crossed the mountains 
and set their faces toward the ^Mississippi \'alley and the 
far west. California and gold-mining had a far stronger 
influence in the western counties of the state than among 
the slave-holders of the middle and eastern counties. 
Hence no slight political advantage accrued to the east by 
the addition of three-fifths of its slaves to its more steady 
white population. ]^Ioreover. the slaves were counted again 
as property in the apportionment of senators. 

In 1S48 Reid succeeded in inducing his party to accept 
" free suftrage " as a plank in its platform, a proposition of 
which he was the author." The plan proposed to amend 
the state constitution by an abrogation of the freehold 
qualification of voters for senators, and to apportion the 
senators as were the members of the commons, that is, on 
the federal basis. It liberalized the franchise only so far 
as to permit non-freeholders to vote in all elections. This 
concession gave the plan a popular impulse among the land- 
less class in both the east and the west. 

Western men, however, who analyzed the proposition 
readilv saw that slight benefit was to be derived by their 
section from its operation. What they would gain in the 
destruction of the property qualification would be lost when 
three-fifths of the slaves of the east were counted in the 



"Constitution of N. C, 1835, Sec. 5. 

"Wheeler, J. H., Historical Sketches of North Carolina, II, 355. 



86 State Rights in North Carolina. [530 

apportionment. Reid was defeated in 1848, though his 
measure had developed unexpected strength and was to 
be again brought forward in 1850. The western leaders, 
in order to stem the popular impulse toward the Demo- 
cratic plan of " free suffrage," now proposed a plan far 
more radical in scope than anything contemplated by the 
Democrats. They offered to abrogate both the freehold 
qualification and the federal basis and to substitute free 
white manhood suffrage in all elections. 

The white basis plan did not meet the approval of the 
Whigs in the middle and eastern counties. ^^ Deriving 
power from federal representation, they were loath to give 
it up. This left the mountain counties only in support of 
the white basis proposal. Reid was elected in 1850 over 
the divided opposition and both branches of the General 
Assembly became Democratic at the same time.^*' The 
" free suffrage " amendment could not yet be effected, how- 
ever, since a two-thirds vote was required by the constitution 
to change any of its features. The vote in the senate was 
along sectional lines, being 33 for and 17 against.^" In the 
house the majority for the amendment was smaller in pro- 
portion to numbers. 

In preparation for the next election the Whig members of 
the Assembly made an attempt to harmonize the opposing 
elements in their party. An address was issued to the people 
in which the constitvitional history of the state was reviewed 
and the grievances were recapitulated which the west had 
suffered since 1776. By the census of 1840 — the basis of 
the last apportionment — it was shown that seventeen west- 
ern senators represented an actual majority of the white 
inhabitants in the state, while the remaining thirty-three 
represented the minority east and its property in slaves and 
land.^^ A convention of the people was recommended to 

"Bassett, J. S., Sufifrage in N. C, 131. 
"Raleigh Register, August 14, 1850. 
"Senate Journal, 1850-1851, 338. 

'*This address is published in Raleigh Register, Jan. 11, 1851, and 
Feb. I, 1851. The line between east and west was naturally drawn 



53 i] Slavery Agitation from 1850 to i860. 87 

amend the constitution as against the Democratic plan of 
amendment by legislative enactment. It was clear from 
the address, however, that the majority did not wish to 
destroy the federal basis of representation in the lower 
house. The trans-mountain men were unable to secure a 
recommendation of the white basis and the situation re- 
mained unchanged. The Democrats successfully reelected 
Reid on the " free suffrage " issue again in 1852, though 
they were still unable to carry the measure through the 
Assembly by the requisite two-thirds majority. By 1854 
the white basis idea had lost some of its support, or many 
of its adherents had recognized the impracticability of se- 
curing their demands. The regular Whig convention spe- 
cifically stated that no change from the federal basis was 
desirable.^'' The western Whigs met in a dissenting con- 
vention in the mountains and threatened to put out a white 
basis candidate. -° The movement came to naught, however, 
beyond further weakening the party. In November the Dem- 
ocrats were strong enough to pass their " free suffrage " 
bill; it was ratified by the succeeding Assembly as required 
by the constitution, and approved by the people the follow- 
ing year.-^ 

Governor Reid carried his suffrage measure to a suc- 
cessful conclusion, but he was less effective in causing the 
state to assume a radical attitude toward the federal gov- 
ernment. His first message after inauguration in 1851 rec- 
ommended cooperation with the other southern states in 
taking the steps necessary to maintain the compromises of 
the Constitution.-- His words were generally understood 
to be a threat of secession.-^ Both branches of the Assem- 

arbitrarily, else the western division could not have contained a 
majority of the population. See census report for N. C. 1840. Also 
reduced census results of 1850 in Wheeler, Sketches, Vol. 8. 

" Whig Convention Platform, Fayetteville Observer, Feb. 24, 1854. 

-" This convention of seceders met at Hendersonville. An ac- 
count of it is in Fayetteville Observer, April 24, 1854. 

-' Laws of North Carolina, 1855, 1857, 12 and 13. 

"■Reid, MS. Letter-book, 140, Message to the Assembly. 

-'Raleigh Register, Jan. 8, 1851. 



88 State Rights in North Carolina. [532 

bly were safely Democratic, yet a radical report,-^ which 
declared secession constitutional, failed of adoption, and in 
its stead was substituted another of a conciliatory tone.-^ 
Western Democrats generally, with the Whigs, supported 
the conservative report."*^ This result was due to the feeling 
of common interests between the small number of western 
Democrats and the Whig party, and is evidence that " free 
suffrage " rather than the renewed national slavery agita- 
tion was responsible for the Democratic victory in the last 
state elections.^^ By this action of the Assembly the resist- 
ance doctrine advocated by the governor received a check, 
and public opinion was prevented from growing further ex- 
cited over the possible wrongs in the compromise measures. 
The Clingman and Badger factions of the Whig party 
in North Carolina looked to the national Whig convention 
of 1852 to close their differences. The nomination of Pres- 
ident Fillmore would satisfy both, and was the only condition 
upon which Clingman and other radical southern Whigs 
would remain in the party. Fillmore had satisfied the 
southern Whigs by his attitude toward slavery and his faith- 
ful execution of the fugitive slave law, and in consequence 
had become distasteful to the northern 'extremists of his 
party. Therefore, when Fillmore's claims were set aside 
and General Scott received the nomination instead, Mr. 
Clingman considered it a triumph of the Seward or anti- 
slavery faction and immediately severed his connection with 
the party. -^ The convention nominated William A. Graham 
of North Carolina for the vice-presidency upon the ticket 
with General Scott, but this did not compensate the party 
in North Carolina for the loss of Mr. Clingman, who now 
supported Franklin Pierce, the Democratic candidate. 

^ House and Senate Documents, 1850-1851, 245, 261. 

=* Ibid., 243. 

^^ Speech of N. W. Woodfin of Buncomb, Raleigh Register, Jan. 

25- . . 

" Representative Clingman had not yet definitely withdrawn from 
the Whig party. 

^* Speeches and Writings of T. L. Clingman, 308-309. 



533] Slavery Agitation from 1830 to i860. 89 

Graham was secretary of the navy in FiUmore's cabinet but 
gave close attention to North Carolina politics. 

The platforms of both the Whig and Democratic state 
conventions, following the example of the national parties, 
affirmed the finality of the compromise measures of 1850, 
thus leaving nothing apparently to choose between the par- 
ties on that score. In congressional representation North 
Carolina was yet Whig; both Senators were Whigs,-^ and 
six of the nine congressional districts had elected Whigs in 
1 85 1. These were the two extreme eastern and the four 
western. The Democrats held the three central strong 
slave-holding districts. This was the usual alignment,^" 
and had been preserved practically since 1835. Clingman's 
defection, however, decided the result of the election in 
North Carolina; five western counties which had hitherto 
been Whig, under Clingman's influence now gave Demo- 
cratic majorities, making up the total majority for Pierce 
electors 686 votes. ^^ 

Disaffection in the mountain district was fatal to the state 
Whig organization. This region, more than any other, 
was free from the economic and social conditions which 
elsewhere produced a tendency toward particularism. It 
had long been looked upon as a stronghold of the Whig 
party. Conservatism was not abandoned in principle, yet 
it was evident that Clingman, for the time being, would 
control the district in the interest of the Democratic party .^^ 
Moreover, the national organization was breaking up. It 
could not longer exist composed of such opposing elements 
as those represented by Seward and Greeley in the North 
and by Toombs and Clingman in the South. The Whig 
spirit continued to live in North Carolina and to oppose 
particularistic doctrine until the end of the decade. 

The year 1853 was devoid of political interest in North 
Carolina. It was a period of quiet preceding the beginning 

'^ Messrs. George E. Badger and Willie P. Mangum. 
'" See Chapter III. 

'' Election Returns, Standard, Nov. 17, 1852. 
''Cf. Fayetteville Observer, Nov. 24, 1852. 



90 State Rights in North Carolina. [534 

of the final legislative struggle in national politics over 
slavery. The people were not conscious, however, that a 
new agitation was near and were quite unprepared for the 
developments of 1854. 

The Kansas-Nebraska bill, introduced in the United States 
Senate on January 4, 1854, by Stephen A. Douglas, be- 
came a law by the signature of President Pierce, May 20, 
following. Its provisions repealed the Missouri Compro- 
mise Act and substituted the principles of popular sov- 
ereignty to determine the question of slavery in the terri- 
tories. During the months in which the bill was pending in 
Congress the southern Whig party was peculiarly situated. 
The measure being Democratic, the Whigs at first seemed 
disposed to oppose it on party grounds as well as from a 
fear of renewed agitation should existing compromises be 
disturbed. In North Carolina the first impulse was to dis- 
trust the measure. ^^ Douglas' motives were supposed to be 
for his own personal advancement, and the fear was ex- 
pressed that the South, like ancient Troy, was invited to 
accept a Grecian horse. ^"^ 

Senator Badger, however, was an earnest supporter of 
the bill. As proof to his northern partymen that it was a 
sincere effort to remove the slavery question from the halls 
of Congress, he secured the adoption of an amendment 
which specifically forbade the revival of slavery under the 
old French law when the Missouri Compromise Act should 
be repealed. ^^' Only two of the Whig Representatives from 
North Carolina refused to vote for the bill upon its first 

^'Raleigh Register, Feb. i, 1854. said: "We confess that we doubt 
the utiHty of disturbing the Missouri Compromise, which was 
acquiesced in by the South as the condition of the admission of 
Missouri as a slave state — though we hardly know what modifica- 
tion our views may undergo. The North may say that by attempt- 
ing to repeal the slavery restriction clause, the south has violated 
a solemn compact, and it will be difficult to refute the charge. The 
bill at all events will be the rallying cry for another anti-slavery 
agitation which will far exceed any which we have yet had." 

^* Fayetteville Observer, April 3, 1854. 

*° Congressional Globe, ist sess., 33d Cong., 520. Senator Willie P. 
Mangum's seat had been vacant since the beginning of the year and 
the N. C. Assembly had not yet elected his successor. 



535] Slavery Agitation from i8jo to i860. gi 

passage in the House.^'^ The Whig state convention had 
met in February and declared in favor of the principles 
of non-intervention, but did not specifically mention the 
Kansas-Nebraska bill."' By the middle of the summer the 
party was as enthusiastic in its support as were the Demo- 
crats, who from the first had hailed it as a long-delayed but 
welcome agreement with the North as to a just settlement 
of the question of slavery. 

The Democrats in 1854 nominated Thomas Bragg to 
make the race for governor with Alfred Dockery, the Whig 
candidate. The lately enacted Kansas-Nebraska bill gave 
to the campaign the character of a congratulatory celebra- 
tion. The convention had endorsed the measure and ex- 
tended thanks to Senator Douglas for its inception and to 
other members of Congress from non-slave-holding states 
who supported it.^® In strong Democratic centers the re- 
turned congressmen, both Whigs and Democrats, were ten- 
dered public dinners, and an era of good feeling was inaug- 
urated. Bragg was elected governor. In the fall ex- 
Governor Reid displaced Mr. Badger in the Senate,^" so with 
the exception of three congressional districts the Democrats 
now had complete control in the state. 

The South had hardly settled into a pleasant enjoyment 
of the thought that the whole country had returned to a 
sense of justice on the slavery question before it began to 
be understood that the intense hostility of northern Whigs 
to the act which repealed the Missouri Compromise much 
more nearly represented the sentiment of the northern peo- 
ple than did the complaisant and accommodating attitude 
of northern Democrats. By July it began to be bruited in 
North Carolina that the indignation of the North was some- 
thing more than a mere ebullition of popular feeling. Fear 

'"These were Messrs. Sion H. Rodgers and R. C. Puryear. 

'' Proceedings of the Whig State Convention. Raleigh Register, 
Feb. 25, 1854. 

^Democratic Convention Proceedings, Standard, April 22, 1854. 

^''Asa Biggs, Democrat, received the second senatorship and re- 
tained it until 1858, when he made place for T. L. Clingman by 
resignation. 



92 State Rights in North Carolina. [53^ 

was expressed that an issue had been drawn upon which 
there was great danger of northern party factions uniting.*" 
On August 23 the Standard pubhshed the proceedings of 
the Anti-Nebraska Convention held at Saratoga, in which 
Horace Greeley declared war on slavery, alleging that the 
South had broken its compact. Already emigrant aid so- 
cieties, supported by popular subscription and backed by 
intense popular enthusiasm, were preparing in the North 
to contest the soil of Kansas with the slave-holder. The 
reflex feeling in the South brought renewed discussion of 
secession and the whole country was soon again in a glow 
of excitement over the rival efforts of northern and southern 
factions for supremacy in Kansas. 

The features of this long drawn out struggle are too 
familiar to require a review in this connection. Its in- 
fluence upon conditions in North Carolina was not essen- 
tially dift'erent from that upon other southern border states. 
The Whigs were too far committed by their approval of 
the Kansas-Nebraska Act to claim exemption from respon- 
sibility for its results. Both parties felt that its miscarriage 
was due to the breaking of a tacit agreement by the northern 
people.*- The logical course for parties in the state would 
have been a coalescence under the influences of the Kansas 
contest. This was the tendency ; but there were fundamen- 
tal differences in the basis upon which the political as well as 
the economic and social life of the people was organized 
which prevented its actual accomplishment. The Whigs nec- 
essarily remained an opposition party because a very large 
number held different views from, the Democrats both upon 
the importance of slavery and upon the constitutionality of 
methods of redress when the institution was attacked. 

The presidential election of 1856 came in the midst of the 
Kansas excitement, and North Carolinians were not with- 

** Standard, July 5, 1854. 

"Standard, Sept. 20, 1854. 

"Fayetteville Observer, Sept. 11, 1854. It had been expected 
that Kansas would become a slave state without opposition from 
the North, and Nebraska a free state unmolested by the South. 



537] Slavery Agitation from 1850 to i860. 93 

out grave fears as to the probable results. In the North the 
Republican party had been organized upon the ruins of the 
Whig party. John C. Fremont was the candidate, upon a 
platform which in spirit was inimical to slavery even where 
already existing. Congressional election returns indicated 
that the party had already developed remarkable strength. 
The Democrats nominated James Buchanan upon a plat- 
form which embodied the principle of the Kansas-Nebraska 
Act, and the South seemed determined upon making his 
election the condition upon which it would remain in the 
Union. 

In October Thomas L. Clingman published an address 
to the people of North Carolina in which he outlined a plan 
for disunion in the event of the election of the Black Repub- 
lican candidate.'*^ This plan possessed no features distin- 
guishable from former methods suggested, but it served 
to familiarize the Democrats with the use of an effective 
campaign weapon. It is difficult to determine what effect 
the election of Fremont in 1856 would have had upon the 
state or upon the South. Certainly a few Democratic lead- 
ers, among them Senator David S. Reid. W. W. Holden, 
and Mr. Clingman, were as earnest in their advocacy of 
secession in the event of party defeat as were any of the 
Hotspur leaders of the cotton states. Moreover, the oppo- 
sition party was in a peculiarly disorganized state and was 
not prepared for the issue. 

The people showed evidences of unusual excitement.*^ 
On October 13 Governor Wise of Virginia and Governor 
Adams of South Carolina were guests of Governor Bragg 
in Raleigh, and Governor Johnson of Georgia was confi- 
dently expected. The ostensible purpose of the visit of 
these neighboring governors was to attend the state fair 
then about to begin. Speculation was rife as to the signifi- 
cance of the meeting, and a rumor was afloat that a dissolu- 
tion of the Union was to be discussed and a plan of action 

*' Clingman's Address, Fayetteville Observer, Oct. 18, 1856. 
** Standard, Sept. 13, 1856. 



94 State Rights in North Carolina. [538 

agreed upon in advance of the November election. No evi- 
dence is forthcoming, however, that the meeting had a poHt- 
ical object. But the event was unusual, especially so in that 
the governors took their departure one day before the open- 
ing of the fair. Many viewed the conclave as a portent of 
disunion. *° 

Though the whole of the year 1856 was a period of ex- 
citement in North Carolina, the strong undercurrent of the 
state's conservatism was exhibited by the people's attitude 
toward the Brooks-Sumner affair in the United States 
Senate. Irrespective of party, Brooks' conduct was very 
generally condemned as an outrage.**' On his way to his 
home in South Carolina Representative Brooks spent a night 
in Raleigh, and a number of citizens gathered at his 
hotel in the evening and requested a speech. His remarks 
seem to have reduced the slight sympathy in which his 
act had hitherto been held.*'^ Buchanan's success in the 
state and in the national election in November was greeted 
as a welcome relief from the political turmoil of the year. 
The triumph was marred, however, by the import of the 
overwhelming victory of Republican electors in twelve 
northern and northwestern states. 

The American or Know Nothing party served mean- 
while as a party shelter to the Whigs in the North who 
refused to enter the Republican party and to those in the 
South who refused to become Democrats. Founded upon 
opposition to the influence of Catholics and foreign immi- 
grants in American politics, this party had, in the South, no 
real reason for existence. 

European immigrants did not come in any large numbers 

*° Raleigh Register, Oct. 15, 1856. The editor of the Register, dis- 
regarding the role of host, blazed out fiercely against the supposed 
" schemes of treason and disunion," and demanded that the people 
should know by whose invitation the governors came, why they met 
just in time for the returns from some of the northern elections, 
and why such an official attempt was made to hitch North Carolina 
to " the car of disunion." 

*" Fayetteville Observer, June 2, 1856. 

" Cf. Raleigh Register, Sept. 3, 1856. 



539] Slavery Agitation from 1850 to i860. 95 

into the slave states; North Carolina received practically 
none at this date, yet the American party found good 
political soil in the state, many of the Whigs entering it 
with the hope of preserving a national party entity. 

Recording the death of the state Whig party and the birth 
of the American party in the same issue, the Democratic 
press warned the people to beware of the " dark lantern 
movement."** Nevertheless, the party rapidly developed 
strength, and early in 1855 district councils were held and 
candidates nominated for Congress. In the succeeding elec- 
tion in August three congressmen were elected by the 
Americans, and they polled 45 per cent, of the total vote in 
every district carried by the Democrats.*^ In 1856 John A. 
Gilmer was nominated to oppose Governor Bragg in the 
gubernatorial contest. Gilmer was the American represen- 
tative of the fourth district,^" which, in large part, was made 
up of counties inhabited by the Friends and known in state 
politics as the " Quaker District." Like his peaceful con- 
stituents, Gilmer was thoroughly conservative, yet he was 
an active and aggressive combatant of Democratic par- 
ticularism. 

Notwithstanding Gilmer's active leadership, the enthu- 
siasm which greeted the party upon its entry into the state 
had now begun to disappear. The novelty of secret polit- 
ical organization soon wore off, and the people did not feel 
that the principles upon which the party was founded were 
vital. Kinship to ancient federalism was a stigma difficult 
to remove. ^^ In the election Bragg carried the state by a 

** Standard, Sept. 23, 1854. The term " dark lantern " ^yas in 
reference to the secret feature of the American party organization 
and to the practice of meeting at night. 

"Official Returns, Standard, Aug. 22, 1855. By the 1854 appor- 
tionment the state's representation was reduced from nine to eight. 

°" This district was traditionally conservative. The Quakers, while 
careful not to antagonize the laws under which they lived, were anti- 
slavery in principle and practice. They emancipated their own 
slaves at the earliest date practicable under the laws and colonized 
many of them in Hayti. See Weeks, Stephen B., Southern Quakers 
and Slavery. 

"' Standard, April 28, 1855. 



96 State Rights in North Carolina. [540 

majority of 12,594 votes, the result being proof to the 
Americans that their party could never command the 
strength of the old Whig organization. Consequently dis- 
integration began. The tendency was to return to original 
Whig principles and to attempt to revivify that party with 
the safety of the Union as the party slogan. The greatest 
practical hindrance in this undertaking was the total sub- 
mergence of the Whig organization in the North. 

The same issues of papers in North Carolina which pub- 
lished President Buchanan's inaugural address in March, 
1857, published also the decision of the United States Su- 
preme Court in the Dred Scott case.^- Public attention, 
which had in part been withdrawn from Kansas for a time 
and absorbed to an unusual degree in the presidential con- 
test, was riveted anew by this famous decision upon the 
still unended struggle in that territory and upon slavery 
in general. North Carolinians expected the decision to 
put an end to slavery agitation. They believed that aboli- 
tionism had been stunned, faction and treason in both sec- 
tions of the Union rebuked, and the Constitution restored. ^^ 
W. W. Holden, speaking for the Democracy, said: "This 
decision concedes to the southern people all they have ever 
asked — the Constitution. If they are true to themselves 
they will never take anything less." The fact that the 
North hailed the decision with a loud protest, and in some 
quarters with ridicule,-'"'* did not diminish the people's faith 
in its efficacy. 

^^ For this case see Howard, U. S. Supreme Court Reports, vol. 
XIX, 293. The main questions involved were : first, whether a 
negro was a citizen and competent to sue in the courts of the United 
States ; second, whether the legal condition of a slave as property 
was affected by his sojourn in a free state; third, whether the 
Missouri Compromise Act, prohibiting slavery in the territories north 
of 36° 30', was constitutional. Each of these questions was answered 
in the negative by the majority opinion of the court. 

^'Cf. Standard, March 18, 1857. 

" Horace Greeley, in the New York Tribune, asserted that the 
decision was entitled to just so much moral weight as would be 
the judgment of a majority of those collected in a Washington 
bar-room. Quoted in Fayetteville Observer, March 15, 1857. 



54 1 ] Slavery Agitation from 1830 to i860. 97 

The result of the Dred Scott decision with which we 
are chiefly concerned was its effect upon the national Demo- 
cratic party. Senator Douglas remained firm in his insis- 
tence that popular sovereignty should decide the issue in 
Kansas, while President Buchanan claimed that the point 
was immaterial after the Supreme Court's dictum. The 
disagreement forced Douglas to act with the Republicans in 
opposition to Buchanan's plan of admitting Kansas to state- 
hood under the Lecompton Constitution.^^ The northern 
Democrats in support of Douglas were thus broken away 
from the southern section of the party which supported 
the President. 

Though North Carolina, in common with the other south- 
ern states, upheld the President's policy, there was a strong 
dread on the part of the Democrats of giving up Mr. 
Douglas and the hope of cooperation with his followers. 
The decision of the party seemed to make a Republican vic- 
tory sure in i860. Even radical Democrats remembered 
that the South, even if united, was in the minority in the 
Union, and that protection could not be had without the aid 
of northern statesmen and northern voters. Should the 
division continue through President Buchanan's term a 
crisis was expected to arrive with the next election.^® 

In North Carolina gubernatorial elections occurred in 
the even years and congressional elections in the odd years. 
In 1857 the Democrats were successful in every congres- 
sional district save one — the Quaker district — which re- 
elected John A. Gilmer. Still, the best known leaders in the 
state, Messrs. Mangum and Morehead, Badger and Graham, 
refused to enter the Democratic party which they had opposed 
so long upon fundamental differences of principle. Thomas 
L. Clingman, however, had been definitely gained, and his 
power over the western counties which again reelected him 

'®The Lecompton Constitution was the constitution of the pro- 
slavery men in Kansas. The pro-slavery leaders refused to submit 
the slavery cause to the voters, and thus designed to defeat the 
principle of Senator Douglas' plan. 

'' Standard, July 22, 1858. 



gS State Rights in North Carolina. [542 

to Congress made Whig rehabilitation a slow process. Yet 
personal antagonisms were beginning to show among the 
leaders of the paramount Democracy, and drew the attention 
of the people away from national and centered it upon home 
politics. The next Democratic state convention began a 
serious division in the party's ranks. 

This convention, called to nominate a candidate for gov- 
ernor, met at Charlotte, April 14, 1858. It was expected 
that the transfer of the convention this year from Raleigh, 
its usual seat, to a western town, would greatly strengthen 
the Democratic feeling of the whole west, which was already 
fast gaining under the tuition of Mr. Clingman. W. W. 
Holden was chairman of the Democratic state executive 
committee, and his intention to become a candidate for the 
nomination also had an influence in taking the convention 
to Charlotte. Holden's supporters were mainly in the west 
among the new non-slave-holding Democrats. 

The platform adopted by the convention was short and 
succinct.^^ It cordially approved the Buchanan adminis- 
tration and endorsed the President's position in favor of 
the immediate admission of Kansas under the Lecompton 
Constitution, regarding the measure as essential to the quiet 
of the country. In the narrower field of state politics the 
convention pledged the party to the completion of the works 
of internal improvement already begun and the construc- 
tion of such others as might be deemed expedient. This 
was a concession also to the western voters who were clam- 
orous for the completion of the western North Carolina 
Railroad now already begun toward the mountains from 
Salisbury. The platform, however, was not so much the 
center of general interest as was the probable nominee for 
governor. 

John W. Ellis, a circuit court judge residing at Salis- 
bury, and W. W. Kolden, editor of the Standard, were the 
opposing candidates for the nomination. For reasons to 

°' Democratic Platform and Convention Proceedings, Standard, 
April 21, 1854. 



543] Slavery Agitation from 1850 to i860. 99 

be explained hereafter Mr. Holden was not an acceptable 
candidate to the eastern slave-holders, who exercised a pre- 
ponderating influence in the party councils. They pre- 
ferred Ellis, who, though a middle western man, was allied 
by birth, sympathy, and interest with the aristocratic regime 
of the slave-holding Democracy. 

An adroit move on the part of Ellis' followers secured 
as the rule for voting in the convention the majority of the 
Democratic strength of the counties, i. e., that the delegation 
from each county should cast as many votes as their county 
had cast for the Democratic candidate in the gubernatorial 
election of 1856, and that a majority vote should nominate. 
This rule militated seriously against Holden's chances, since 
of course the eastern counties which were opposed to him 
had given much heavier Democratic votes than had the 
western counties which supported him. Yet in the prelim- 
inary skirmishing the chances of the opponents seemed 
equal until the deflection of one strong eastern delegate, 
whose influence had been pledged to Holden but who was 
afterward won over for Ellis by the eastern men. Ellis 
was nominated on the first ballot ; Holden received the votes 
of only three eastern counties, while nearly all the western 
counties were cast for him. The result was not only a dis- 
appointment to Holden, who, on account of the invaluable 
services he had rendered the party had a right to expect the 
nomination,^^ but was also the entering wedge of a class 
distinction which seriously hampered the party at a later 
date. 

The personality of both Holden and Ellis requires atten- 
tion in this connection, not only because of the subsequent 
influence of each upon the Democratic policy in North Caro- 
lina, but because even at this date they represented radically 
dififerent elements within the party and the state. Ellis was 

" For the conclusions drawn from the results of this convention the 
author has relied upon newspaper comment of both parties and upon 
the personal evidence of Mr. John A. Nichols, of Raleigh, who was 
personally familiar with the course of state politics at the time. 

L OF C. 



lOO State Rights in North Carolina. [544 

decidedly aristocratic both by inheritance and training.^" 
A typical English southerner of the slave-holding class, he 
had habits of authority and command indelibly stamped 
upon his character. After having received good early 
training he entered Randolph-Macon College in Virginia, 
where he spent several years. Later on he took his degree 
at the University of North Carolina. He read law for two 
years and came to the bar in 1842, at the age of 22 years. 
After serving several terms in the house of commons, in 
1848 he was elected a judge of the Superior Court and 
served the bench with ability until his nomination for gov- 
ernor in 1858. His relation to North Carolina history from 
1858 until his death in 1861 shows that Governor Ellis was 
a man of the strictest state rights views, and that he pos- 
sessed the courage of his convictions. He recognized much 
earlier than did the state at large that North Carolina was 
destined to act with her sister slave-holding states, and he 
bent his energies toward preparation for the crisis. 

William W. Holden was his opposite in origin, training, 
and character. Born in poverty and obscurity, of the most 
humble parentage, in a slave-holding district where social 
and intellectual eminence was rarely attained by those out- 
side the pale of the politico-social aristocracy, Holden had by 
indomitable will and sheer energy forced his way up to a 
position of peculiar power in the state. As a boy Holden 
had no educational advantages beyond such as he obtained 
by apprenticing himself to the editor of a Whig newspaper 
in Hillsboro, the old state capital, in his native county, 
Orange.*'*' In 1848, a young man, he came to Raleigh seek- 
ing employment in a larger field. There he found an unex- 
pected opportunity. The state had been consistently Whig 
for a decade. The fortunes of the Democratic party were 
at such a low ebb that the aged editor of the party organ, 
the North Carolina Standard, despairing of party success 

^^ The author is indebted to Wheeler, J. H., Reminiscences, page 
405, et seq., for facts relating to the early life of Governor Ellis. 

^° This newspaper was the Hillsboro Recorder, edited by Dennis 
Hart, a man of unusual force and originality. 



545] Slavery Agitation from 1850 to i860. loi 

in his time, wished to give up the paper. The managers 
offered the editorship to Holden, who, though of Whig 
training, was young enough to make a new party ahgnment. 
In point of fact, party principles seem to have been no great 
obstacle to him when weighed against his necessity for a 
business and political opportunity. He promptly accepted 
the offer and assumed control. The opportunity was a stim- 
ulus to his ambition and, with a hope of ultimate success, 
he threw himself into the task of reviving the state Democ- 
racy.*^^ 

To Holden's efforts were due in large part the popular- 
izing of the Democratic " free suffrage " measure of 1848 
and D. S. Reid's election in 1850.''- This was a task the 
more congenial to him because the success of the measure 
involved to an extent the democratization of the Democratic 
party, and hence was in line with his own feelings as one 
of the common people. Both as an editor and as a practical 
politician Holden was invaluable to the party in keeping 
Democratic principles dominant from 1850 to i860. Though 
he defended slavery with great ability, Holden always re- 
mained without the personal service of slaves, a represen- 
tative of the artisan classes, whose confidence he fully 
possessed. He never inspired, however, the full confidence 
of the slave-holding aristocracy, and to this it was gen- 
erally understood*^^ was due his defeat for the nomination 
at Charlotte. His nomination in the convention would un- 
doubtedly have strengthened the party among the non-slave- 
holding classes, but on the contrary the denial of his claims 
alienated them. Antagonisms were veiled, however, and 
the break was not abrupt. 

In the campaign Ellis had no organized opposition ; the 
Americans did not have a candidate and Duncan K. McRae, 
a former Democrat, opposed him independently. McRae's 
declared purpose in turning free lance was to call the atten- 

" See Boyd, J. K., Monograph. The Life of W. W. Holden. 
°^ Bassett, J. S. Suffrage in North Carolina, published by the 
Amer. Hist. Assoc, 1895, 282. 
"'Raleigh Register, May 6, 1858. 



I02 State Rights in North Carolina. [54^ 

tion of the people from slavery alarms and fix it upon the 
needs of manufactures, internal improvements, and educa- 
tion, all of which were in a depressing condition.*'* Ellis' 
victory was assured ; but McRae received an unexpectedly 
large vote,**^ being mainly supported by the disorganized 
Americans. The suddenly developed strength of the inde- 
pendent ticket warned the Democratic leaders that the ten- 
dency of the people was toward local rather than national 
issues, and that their party stood upon a precarious footing 
when an independent candidate could command such a vote. 

The victory of Stephen A. Douglas over Abraham Lin- 
coln in their notable campaign for the Illinois senatorship 
in 1858 was an exception to the almost unbroken series of 
Republican victories at the North in the fall elections. Re- 
publican successes served as opportunities for the southern 
Democracy to appeal to the southern oppositionists for a 
united stand against their common enemy. This appeal was 
effectual in a number of lower southern states at this date, 
resulting in a practical consolidation of parties. In North 
Carolina, however, the opposition felt that the Democracy 
had had its opportunity to compose the country and had 
failed.*"* Democratic victory in the national and state elec- 
tions in i860 promised to be at a greater cost in the state 
than in 1856. Whether it could be purchased at all seemed 
to hang on circumstances not yet developed. The Whigs 
were about to reorganize, and Holden's followers were not 
yet appeased. 

Although Governor Ellis found it necessary, in his inaug- 
ural address, January i. 1859, to use pacific language in 
his discussion of the threatened disruption of the Union, 
yet his attitude showed his inflexible determination to pre- 
serve intact the constitutional rights of the state as they 
were interpreted by the aggressive southern Democracy. 
He said : " We are not prepared for the acknowledgment 

®* McRae's Address to the People of North Carolina. Raleigh 
Register, May 19, 1858. 
^ Ellis received 52,000 votes ; McRae, 40,000. 
*° Raleigh Register, Nov. 10, 1858. 



547] Slavery Agitation from i8jo to i860. 103 

that we cannot enjoy all our constitutional rights in the 
Union. Should that day unfortunately come, but little 
doubt need be entertained that our people will act as best 
comports with their interests and honor and with the sacred 
memories of the past, to whatever the result may lead.""^ 
Prevailing public sentiment would not have sanctioned a 
stronger expression than this on the relation of the state to 
the Union. It was understood that unless some means were 
found to heal the strife among the Democratic leaders there 
would be grave danger of party defeat in the approaching 
congressional election. The dissensions, begun by Holden's 
defeat at Charlotte, had been increased by the second defeat 
of that editor for the United States senatorship. The Gen- 
eral Assembly had chosen T. L. Clingman for the short 
term, over Holden, while the long term was given to ex- 
Governor Bragg, who had foregone a second term as gov- 
ernor. This treatment of Holden, whose claims were sup- 
ported by the really Democratic portion of the party j''^ very 
nearly produced an open break in the ranks. 

The visit of President Buchanan in June and his ad- 
dress delivered at the commencement exercises of the State 
University drew together Holden and the Democratic lead- 
ers of the ruling faction, all of whom were members of the 
university board of trustees. A truce seems to have been 
patched up, and Holden continued in active support of the 
Democracy. All visible signs of factional strife disap- 
peared for the time. The theme of the President in his 
address was *' The Constitutional Union, "^^ a subject grate- 
ful to the ears of the state Democracy provided the " Con- 
stitution " received the more specific emphasis. Buchanan 
dealt with the subject diplomatically, and his sentiments 
were heartily received by the large crowds in attendance 
and reechoed by the press throughout the state. Numer- 
ous letters endorsing his views appeared in many of the 

" Inaugural Address, Raleigh Register, Jan. 12, 1859. 
*" Raleigh Register, Dec. i, 1858. 

"^ President Buchanan's address is published in the Standard, Jan. 
15, 1859. 



I04 State Rights in North Carolina. [54^ 

state papers. The chief importance of the presidential visit, 
however, was the accomplishment of the result for which it 
was evidently designed by the Democratic board, i. c, the 
closing, at least temporarily, of the factional fight in the 
state Democracy. 

The bickerings of the Democrats among themselves were 
hushed none too soon for party safety. Early in the year 
the Know Nothing mernbers of the General Assembly met 
in a caucus, agreed to abandon Know Nothingism, substi- 
tuted Whig as the party name,'" and determined upon a 
united fight against the Democrats in both state and national 
elections in i860. The first attention of the rehabilitated 
party was given to the congressional elections in August. 
The result was an equal division of the eight congressional 
districts between the two parties. Besides electing four 
Representatives, the new Whig party cast a large vote in the 
four Democratic districts.'^ 

The condition essential to the growth in North Carolina 
of this new Whig party, with principles of the old one, 
was the absence of slavery agitation in national politics. 
No rival party could hope for success while it was neces- 
sary to defend the principles of its Democratic opponent. 
Hence, John Brown's fanatical attempt at Harper's Ferry, 
in October, to raise the slaves in insurrection, suddenly 
arrested the party's development. 

Brown's capture and swift execution brought out many 
expressions of sympathy in the North, especially in abolition 
centers. The South received such expressions of sympathy 
as northern endorsement of an attempt to subvert her insti- 
tutions, and the smouldering embers of sectional bitterness 
were again blown into a vivid flame. Although in North 
Carolina the Whigs were calmer in their criticism of the 
incident than were the Democrats, yet the Whig party organ 
declared that the South would now never submit to the elec- 
tion of Seward or of any sectional Republican.'^- This was 

" Know Nothing Caucus Proceedings, Standard, August 24, 1859. 
" Election Returns, official. Standard, August 24, 1859. 
" Raleigh Register, Nov. 19, 1859. 



549] Slavery Agitation from i8jo to i860. 105 

radical ground for the Whigs, more radical than events 
proved the party willing to hold. Yet it is undoubtedly 
true that such a feeling of danger to slavery was almost uni- 
versal in the South, and caused an absolute dread of a Re- 
publican president. 

Since the General Assembly met only in the even years, 
no official expression of North Carolina's sentiment as to 
the Harper's Ferry incident could be had except through 
the governor and his council. Governor Ellis, therefore, 
called together his council on the seventh of December, and 
passed a series of resolutions in support of Governor Wise 
of Virginia in his efforts toward quick justice for the offen- 
ders. The resolutions declared : " If we cannot hold our 
slave property, and at the same time enjoy repose and tran- 
quility in the Union, we will be constrained in justice to 
ourselves and our posterity to establish new forms."'^ The 
council advised the governor to encourage the organization 
of volunteer companies and to apply to the President for 
arms. The governor had already adopted this as his policy. 
Four months before he had appHed to Secretary of War 
Floyd to replenish the arsenal at Fayetteville with modern 
arms and the request had been complied with a few months 
later.''^ Even from conservative quarters came the recom- 
mendation to prepare for war ; to build powder factories 
and foundries for cannon ; to renovate the military system of 
the state by requiring each county to have at least one well- 
equipped volunteer company which should be mustered and 
drilled often enough for efficiency. '° This feeling of a 
necessity for preparation arose from no desire for war, but 
from a dread of unpreparedness should hostilities be un- 
avoidable, as was undoubtedly feared. 

Slaves were always allowed a fair measure of personal 
freedom in North Carolina. Even on the larger planta- 
tions the master usually knew each slave personally, and 

"Resolutions of the Council of State, published in all state papers 
in December, 1859. 
'* Ellis, MS. Letter-book, 76. 
"Raleigh Register, Nov. 30, 1859. 



io6 State Rights in North Carolina. [55o 

was the court of appeals in case of wrongs from overseers. 
Religious and social gatherings of slaves, though under 
certain disciplinary restraint, were governed by no hard 
and fast rules, and the pass system for negroes at night was 
liberal in its operation. '** When the new agitation arose 
after the John Brown raid the state press began to urge 
masters to curtail the large liberty enjoyed by their slaves.'^^ 
A second cause for this new attitude was a book called 
" The Impending Crisis of the South," published in New 
York in 1857 by Hinton Rowan Helper, a native of Rowan 
County, North Carolina. This book was in the main a 
compilation of statistics intended to prove that slavery was 
an economic curse to the South. In addition it contained 
sentiments usually expected only from abolition centers at 
the North. As a non-slave-holder and hater of the slave 
labor system the author injected no little class venom into 
his pages. 

Helper's book attracted no special attention until 1858, 
when Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune began a 
movement to procure its broad circulation in both the free 
and slave states. For this purpose he secured its endorse- 
ment by sixty-eight Republican members of Congress. 
Popular feeling now became very strong in North Carolina 
against abolition propagandism. There was already a law 
upon the statute books against incendiary literature. " The 
Impending Crisis " was classed under this head and several 
prosecutions for its distribution were secured.'® The council 
of state advised the governor to require justices of the peace 
to subject canvassers and peddlers to the strictest scrutiny. 
These often proved to be distributors of literature highly 
objectionable to slave-owners. 

When Congress met in December both the John Brown 
raid and Helper's book became of great importance in na- 

"Bassett, J. S. Slavery in N. C. 

" Standard, Dec. 7, 1859, Raleigh Register, Nov. 30, 1859. 

" Fayetteville Observer, January 2, Jan. 9, i860. The most notable 
of these trials was that of a Quaker, Daniel Worth, at Greensboro. 
Worth was a declared abolitionist. 



55 1 ] Slavery Agitation from i8§o to i860. 107 

tional politics, the former in the Senate, the latter in the 
House. The Senate controversy had no more bearing on 
conditions in North Carolina than upon the South in gen- 
eral, and therefore has no special interest in this connec- 
tion. But the contest for the speakership in the House of 
Representatives, in which the Helper book determined the 
result, was intimately bound up with the state of parties 
in North Carolina as well as in the Union. The Repub- 
licans had a majority over the Democrats alone, but the 
Americans or original Whigs, twenty-six in number, held 
the balance of power between the two. The Americans 
claimed to be the only non-sectional party in existence. 
Soon after the first inefifectual ballot a Democrat offered 
a resolution which declared that no member who had en- 
dorsed " The Impending Crisis " was fit to be speaker.'^® 
This was aimed at John Sherman of Ohio, the Republican 
candidate, who was among the endorsers. The Democrats 
hoped for the votes of the Americans to enable them to 
defeat Sherman and elect a Democrat. Instead of this 
development John A. Gilmer of North Carolina, American 
Representative of the Quaker district, moved an amendment 
to the Democratic resolution which left nothing of it except 
the word " resolved." In its place he proposed a declara- 
tion that it was the duty of all good citizens to oppose every 
attempt to renew slavery agitation.^" Well knowing the 
detrimental effect upon the life of the new Whig organiza- 
tion in North Carolina as well as the danger to the national 
situation should the issue be squarely joined on sectional 
lines, Gilmer refused to yield his strategic position and 
withdraw his amendment at the instance of the Democrats, 
There was also a probability of inducing the Democrats, in 
the event of failure of their own plan, to vote for an Amer- 
ican for speaker, and thus at least to secure the position to 
a conservative rather than to a Republican. This was the 
tendency, and Mr. Gilmer himself received an increasing 

^* Congressional Globe, ist sess., 36th Cong., p. 3. 
^'Cong. Globe, ist sess., 36th Cong., p. 18. 



io8 State Rights in North Carolina. [552 

number of votes until the thirty-sixth ballot.^^ The failure 
of the Democrats to concentrate on him was due mainly 
to personal opposition made by the four Democrats from 
North Carolina, as the selection of GilmxCr as speaker would 
greatly increase the strength of his party at home. A bitter 
fight had been made by the state Democracy against his 
reelection to Congress. He was the most uncompromising 
of the party's opponents in the state, and in addition had 
voted in Congress against the admission of Kansas vmder 
the Lecompton Constitution. The North Carolina Demo- 
cratic Representatives were now in a position to retaliate. 
Warren Winslow of the third district was chairman of the 
congressional committee of five appointed by a Democratic 
caucus to manage affairs for the party until the House 
should be organized. In this position of power and in- 
fluence Winslow, an intense southern rights advocate and 
withal a shrewd politician, set himself in opposition to 
Gilmer's candidacy for the speakership and refused him 
Democratic support. Gilmer did not withdraw, however, 
and his party refused to support a Democrat, whereupon 
a second North Carolina Whig, W. N. H. Smith, was fixed 
upon. Smith, less aggressive in state politics and more 
amenable to Democratic influence than Gilmer, received 
the support of Winslow and the Democratic party. On the 
thirty-ninth ballot 112 votes were cast for Smith to 106 for 
Sherman, bringing the former within three votes of elec- 
tion.^^ To prevent the election of a southern man Sherman 
now withdrew, and William Pennington, a moderate Re- 
publican who had not endorsed Helper's book, was substi- 
tuted. Pennington received the votes of the northern 
Americans in addition to the Republicans and was elected 
on the forty-fourth ballot over McClernand, Democrat, who 
could not command the votes of the southern Americans. 
These had gone back to Gilmer, who received sixteen votes 
on the last ballot. 



"Cong. Globe, ist sess., 36th Cong., p. 219. 
'=Ibid., p. 611. 



553] Slavery Agitation from 1850 to i860. 109 

Organization of the House was thus effected on the last 
of February, i860, two months after the meeting of Con- 
gress. The long drawn out contest was attended by an 
intensification of bitterness between the North and South 
scarcely before paralleled. The strain was increased by 
the insistence of the South in the Senate upon an investi- 
gation of the Harper's Ferry affair. Many southern Sena- 
tors believed the responsibility for John Brown's action 
to rest with prominent men of the North or with abolition 
societies encouraged by them. The criminations and re- 
criminations in the halls of Congress found an echo in the 
growing excitement and embitterment among the people. 

Though quietude in the field of national politics had 
seemed the only condition under which the Whig party in 
North Carolina could develop, yet an issue had arisen in the 
local field which seemed to assure it a less treacherovis foun- 
dation. In October, 1859, a society was organized at 
Raleigh known as The Workingmen's Association. This 
organization, fully equipped with officers and machinery, 
immediately showed its intention of organizing all mechan- 
ics and workingmen throughout the state. Its object, as 
set forth in published resolutions,*^ was a reform of the 
state's laws for raising its revenue. These laws, the work- 
ingmen averred, were not framed in accordance with the 
principles of justice and equality; they discriminated against 
the non-slave-holder and operated most heavily upon those 
who were least able to bear the burdens of the state. The 
third resolution read : " That it becomes the mechanics and 
workingmen of North Carolina, while respecting the rights 
and interests of others, to look also to their own rights and 
interests, and to insist upon that political equality and that 
participation in public affairs to which they as free men are 
entitled." Apparently the political motive was not to lag 
behind the economic motive. An address to the people of 
the state, signed by the society,** appeared December 14, 

*^ Resolutions of the Workingmen's Association, Standard, Oct. 
26, 1859. 
** Standard, Dec. 14, 1859. 



no State Rights in North Carolina. [554 

in which the economic motive was stressed. The working- 
men's first demand was an equaHzation of taxation so that 
slave property might be compelled to pay its equal portion 
of the public expense. 

The North Carolina constitution, as remodeled in 1835, 
provided that slaves between the ages of twelve and fifty 
years should be subject only to a poll tax equal to that paid 
by white men, and those under twelve and over fifty should 
be exempt from taxation altogether. The Workingmen's 
Society put forth statistics to show that 187,842 slaves, 
worth in the market $112,568,800, went entirely untaxed, 
while those subject to taxation as between the age limits — 
159,925 in number and valued at $139,000,000 — paid into 
the state treasury only $75,462, or .50 each, the amount of 
the poll tax. $31,000,000 of money loaned would pay, un- 
der the law, $76,000 in taxes, or more than was paid by 
owners of slave property valued at $250,000,000. Thus the 
discrimination in favor of slave property was in a seven- 
fold ratio. $1,000 worth of land paid a tax of $1.50. A 
negro worth $1,000 or even $1,500 yielded only .50 to the 
state treasury, while $1,000 invested in manufactures paid 
$10. The statistics offered were trustworthy, having been 
made up from the census and the comptroller's and treas- 
urer's reports. 

For the correction of these inequalities the Workingmen's 
Association purposed to secure a constitutional amendment 
whereby slaves could be taxed ad valorem. To create sen- 
timent for the measure and to distribute facts local asso- 
ciations were to be organized in each county. The move- 
ment awakened the strongest opposition from the slave- 
holders. If successful it would enormously increase their 
taxes. Moreover, it promised to create an agitation over 
slavery which would array class against class and west 
against east at a time when slavery needed all the protection 
possible on account of the threatening aspect of national 
affairs. 



5 55] Slavery Agitation from 1850 to i860. iii 

The real danger to the slave-holder lay in the evident 
tendency of the non-slave-holding west to unite with the 
non-slave-holding classes of the east, in which event the 
slave-holders would be in a hopeless minority.®^ Though 
" ad valorem " commanded the support of a few influential 
slave-holders,^® the fight was essentially one between slave- 
holders and non-slave-holders, between slave labor and free 
labor, both for economic and political supremacy. Could 
the national crisis have been delayed until the contest had 
reached its climax an interesting chapter would have been 
made in North Carolina history. The national crisis, how- 
ever, now close at hand, soon served as a welding hammer 
upon the opposing forces. When the curtain was again 
lifted the problem had disappeared — slavery no longer 
existed. 

The Whig state convention met in February, i860, to 
nominate a candidate for governor, and promptly made ad 
valorem taxation a plank in its platform. '^^ The Working- 
men's Association ceased its efforts to organize county asso- 
ciations and entrusted its cause to the Whig party. John 
Pool, an intense partisan and a strong debater, became the 
candidate.®^ 

" In North Carolina at this date there were nearly three hun- 
dred thousand slaves, and the number of slave-holders out of the 
six hundred thousand white population was between thirty and 
forty thousand. See estimate of Standard, Dec. 29, 1859. This 
estimate was based on the census of 1850. 

'" Moses A. Bledsoe, a Democrat and the owner of about 40 slaves, 
had first ofifered the ad valorem bill in the house of commons in 1856, 
but it met with no favor from his party and was never prominent 
as an issue until 1859-1860. Mr. Bledsoe continued its support when 
adopted by the Workingmen and later by the Whig party, and was 
ruled out of the Democratic ranks. He is still living in Raleigh at 
a green old age and recalls all the details of this controversy with 
remarkable clearness. Realizing that ad valorem taxation would 
touch his own pocket in common with all other slave-holders, he 
supported the measure because he felt it was a just one and would 
in the end strengthen the state. 

" Whig Convention Proceedings, Raleigh Register, Feb. 29, i860. 

** It is interesting to note that the tendency in all North Carolina 
state elections was for the Whigs, who were strongest in the west, 
to take their candidate from the east for the purpose of strengthen- 
ing their party in that section. In like manner the Democrats, who 



112 State Rights in North Carolina. [55^ 

The Democrats held their convention in March, renomi- 
nated Governor EUis, and declared against any attempt to 
disturb the existing method of raising the revenue as " pre- 
mature, impolitic, dangerous, and unjust."^^ As evidenced 
by a strong state rights plank, the party hoped to turn public 
attention from the state issue and fix it upon the dangers to 
be apprehended by the South from northern encroachments 
upon slavery. Their defeat in August, they claimed, would 
aid in their defeat in the November presidential election and 
mean a weakening of the southern attitude. The Whig 
state convention had ridiculed the idea of secession in the 
event of Democratic defeat in November. The Democrats 
now declared such a course a strong possibility, and urged 
unity. 

The two candidates arranged a joint debate and began a 
vigorous campaign. Governor Ellis, as much as possible, 
kept the discussion in the field of national politics, while 
his opponent insisted upon directing attention to the taxa- 
tion of slaves. The people refused to be alarmed as to the 
national situation, whereupon Governor Ellis finally turned 
to state issues and adroitly threw his opponent upon the 
defensive by calling attention to the fact that, while the 
Whig platform demanded an equalization of taxation on all 
forms of property, it made no provision for exemption. He 
assumed the object was to tax ovens, pots, pans, tin cups, 
chickens, and eggs as well as slaves. Despite the efforts of 
his opponent, the campaign assumed the character of a pot, 
pan, and tin cup issue. This was no small factor in the 
result ; men everywhere are opposed to taxation in detail, 
and the mere discussion of such a proposition alarms a cer- 
tain class of voters. 

The serious Democratic argument against ad valorem 
taxation of slaves was embraced in the claim of the eastern 
slave-holder that he should not be taxed ten dollars on the 

were all powerful in the middle east usually, chose a candidate from 
the west. Thus in this campaign Pool was from the east and Ellis 
from the west. 
** Democratic Platform. Standard, March lo, i860. 






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557] Slavery Agitation from 1850 to i860. 113 

thousand dollar value of each of the slaves with which he 
cultivated his fields, while the western farmer, using free 
labor, went untaxed. "^ Yet the western farmer fed his 
laborer and paid him wages, while the eastern farmer was 
only at the expense of the keep of the slave. With the tax 
added, the cost of slave labor was thus far from equal to 
that of free labor unless the original cost-price of the slave 
was considered, and this was only fair. However, could 
slave property have been brought under its fair burden of 
taxation, the effect would have been to remove the taint of 
discrimination and to give every citizen, whether slave- 
holder or not, an interest in the protection of the institu- 
tion. North Carolina stood alone among the southern 
states in not taxing slaves as property. 

The Democracy, occupying the position of defender of 
southern rights and led by the aggressive governor, was in 
the end able to overmatch the increasing strength of the 
Whigs. Ellis was reelected, but by a reduced majority of 
over ten thousand votes at the time when the largest vote 
ever polled in the state was brought out.''^ In the victory 
was read the decision of the majority against ad valorem 
taxation and its incident slavery agitation until quieter times 
on that subject in national politics. 

Closer examination of the Democratic attitude to national 
politics preceding the August election discloses the chief 
factor in the party's success. The convention in March 
reaffirmed the Cincinnati platform of 1856, passed strong 
resolutions in support of the Dred Scott decision, and, in 
reference to John Brown's raid, declared that the Union 
could not longer endure under further encroachments upon 
slavery.''- After nomination Governor Ellis came before 
the convention and delivered a speech in which he took a 
prophetic view of the national situation. In reference to 
the approaching national election he held that the existence 

"' Cf. Greensboro Patriot, April 6, i860. 

" Election Returns, official. Standard, Aug. 29, i860. 

"■ Democratic Convention Proceedings. Standard, March 10. 



114 State Rights in North Carolina. [S58 

of slavery, not in the territories but in the South itself, was 
at stake. " The abolition of slaver}' here at home," he said, 
" is the design of our opponents. This is the band that 
cements all the anti-slavery elements in one solid column 
against us."''^ Although the people showed no disposition 
to take so alarming a view of the situation, nevertheless they 
preferred a governor who was on the defensive. Although 
earnestly desiring a respite from sectional strife, they were 
yet unwilling to lower their defenses while the enemy 
threatened. 

The main features of the presidential contest of i860 
were as follows : The convention of the national Demo- 
cratic party met at Charleston, April 23. It was a foregone 
conclusion that it would be difficult to secure harmony 
between the northern and southern factions of the party as 
to the powers and duties of Congress in regard to territorial 
slavery. Douglas and the northern Democracy would stand 
or fall with popular sovereignty. In the view of the south- 
ern Democracy the Dred Scott decision covered the whole 
ground. Two reports were brought in by the committee 
on platform. The majority report, securing in the com- 
mittee the adherence of only three states more than the 
minority report, embodied the demands of the South on the 
subject of slavery. It declared that the federal government 
was bound to protect slaves, as legally existing property, in 
every territory until the same became a state. The minority 
report, presented by a majority of northern delegates on the 
committee, proposed to abide by the action of the Supreme 
Court in all slavery cases coming up from the territories. 
The northern delegates declared that if crippled by an obli- 
gation of congressional protection and a distinct repudiation 
of popular sovereignty they would be unable to maintain 
themselves in the campaign at home. On the other hand, 
the delegates of the cotton states declared that if the decla- 
ration of the convention in regard to slavery were not une- 

°' Pamphlets, 1860-1861, pp. 4-20. Gov. Ellis' speech before the 
Democratic Convention at Raleigh. 



[559 Slavery Agitation from 1850 to i860. 115 

quivocally for protection they would retire from the con- 
vention. The true proportional voting strength of the 
South being over-represented in the committee, when the 
reports were finally voted on the northern delegates, with 
the aid of some border-state conservatives, secured the adop- 
tion of the minority report. Wliereupon the delegates of 
all the cotton states, led by Wm. L. Yancey of Alabama, 
withdrew from the convention. After all prospect of a 
nomination had disappeared the remaining delegates ad- 
journed to meet again at Baltimore, June 18. Another bolt 
by the southern delegates occurred at Baltimore. Douglas 
was nominated by the remaining or northern section of the 
party, while the new bolters retired to Richmond, where 
they met the original bolters from Charleston and nominated 
John C. Breckenridge. 

Meanwhile, on May 18, the Republican convention met at 
Chicago and nominated Abraham Lincoln upon a platform 
which declared that slavery did not exist in the territories ; 
that Congress had no power to legalize it there, and that 
the union of the states must and should be preserved. The 
Whig party, now called the Union party, met at Baltimore, 
May 9, and nominated John Bell of Tennessee on a platform 
containing nothing besides the Constitution. 

North Carolina held the chairmanship of the platform 
committee in the Charleston convention,'^* and her delegates, 
though seeking to compose the differences between the 
northern and lower southern factions of the party, voted 
for the majority report. When the bolt occurred, however, 
the North Carolina delegation remained in the convention 
and continued to ballot for a nominee until adjournment.^^ 
When the second bolt occurred at Baltimore her delegates, 

" The chairman was W. W. Avery, a member of the radical 
faction in North Carolina politics. 

°° W. W. Holden, delegate for the state at large, wrote from 
Charleston : " For our part, we have no hesitancy in saying that we 
will not go with South Carolina or Wm. L. Yancey and his followers 
in their attempt to dissolve the Union. Nor do we by any means 
despair of the Republic. We still have confidence in the National 
Democratic party." Raleigh Register, May 9, i860. 



Ii6 State Rights in North Carolina. [560 

with one exception,^" came to Richmond and cast their votes 
for Breckenridge. 

After the series of conventions of the Democratic party 
had finally ended in its definite split into sectional factions 
with two candidates in the field, the chances for party suc- 
cess seemed small. Yet, hoping against hope, the party in 
North Carolina prepared for the contest of ballots. Mr. 
Holden proposed that Breckenridge electors be supported 
on condition that they should vote for the strongest man — 
Breckenridge or Douglas — against Lincoln, and that if the 
state's vote would elect neither, then the electors should vote 
as they pleased. ^'^ The proposition met no united opposi- 
tion, and though the matter was not definitely determined 
before the date of the election a united effort was made, on 
this understanding, to suppress the Douglas electoral ticket. 

Douglas Democrats were numerous in the summer, ^^ but 
were met with the argument that two electoral tickets would 
not benefit their candidate and might throw the state to 
Bell and the Whigs. The electors, however, were not taken 
down, though the vigor with which the Democratic press 
set to work to weed out Douglas voters was not without the 
reward of success, even though it is difficult to determine 
whether a majority of these entered the Union or the Demo- 
cratic party. 

Naturally, Lincoln was not a factor in the election in 
North Carolina, except in so far as the fear of his election 
influenced the decision of those who were undecided whether 
to support Breckenridge or Bell. The decision was to be 
between these two, and the determining factor was the 
voter's judgment as to which would the better conserve 
southern interests by defeating Lincoln. A vote cast for 
Bell would not only be cast in the interest of conservatism 
and quiet in national parties but would go further to 
strengthen and reinvigorate the rapidly growing state Whig 

*' Robert P. Dick remained at Baltimore until adjournment, though 
he did not assist in Douglas' nomination. 
"' Standard, Aug. 15, i860. 
** Standard, Aug. 22, i860. 



56 1 ] Slavery Agitation from 1850 to i860. 117 

party. On the other hand, since it was generally under- 
stood that Breckenridge's chances of election, though small, 
were better than those of Bell,"^ a vote cast for the latter 
would weaken the chances of a victory over the Republicans 
and so bring the country to the verge of dissolution, or even 
possibly effect dissolution. Undoubtedly the fear of radical 
action by the lower South in the event of Democratic defeat 
led many North Carolinians to support Breckenridge in the 
hope of removing the cause for such action.^^" 

The state Democracy, however, did not go so far as to 
make dissolution of the Union contingent upon Brecken- 
ridge's defeat. Such a proposition, advanced early in Oc- 
tober by a radical newspaper,"^ was emphasized by only a 
few Democratic speakers and apparently only for the pur- 
pose of winning votes through the fears it would arouse. 
The answer to the suggestion was an immense mass-meeting 
held at Salisbury in the middle of October. Many Demo- 
crats as well as the Whigs attended the two days' session.^"- 
The leading unionists made speeches in regular program. 
Graham, Badger, W. N. H. Smith, and Vance were eagerly 
listened to by great crowds assembled around outdoor plat- 
forms. Vance spoke for two hours during the evening of 
the first day amid a cold drizzling rain, and though his 
audience contained hundreds of ladies no one left the as- 
semblage until he had finished.^**^ " But one sentiment pre- 
vailed," said the reporter, " and that was, we will fight for 
the Constitution, the Union, and the laws, unthin the Union 
and the laws. We will not be influenced by seceders in the 
South or Black Republicans in the North, and we will never 
give up our institutions until stern necessity compels us to 
believe that they, being no longer adequate to our protec- 
tion, we must resort to that right of revolution which is 



''Standard, Sept. 11, i860. 

""Cf. Fayetteville Observer, editorial, Nov. 13, i860. 
"^ Wilmington Daily Journal. 

'""For an account of this meeting see Raleigh Register, Oct. 17, 
i860. 
"'Raleigh Register, Oct. 17, i860. 



Ii8 State Rights in North Carolina. [5^2 

inherent in every people."^''* This program, announced in 
the Sahsbury meeting, was the unionists' defiance, given in 
advance to those of the Democratic party who might enter- 
tain the idea that the state would follow the Hotspurs of the 
cotton states in an attempt to break up the Union. 

The popular vote in November was: Douglas, 2401; 
Breckenridge, 48,539 ; Bell, 44,990. Thus Breckenridge re- 
ceived an absolute majority of 848 votes. While the votes 
cast for Bell and Douglas may be classed distinctly as 
Union votes, those cast for Breckenridge may also to a very 
large extent be so considered. The vote plotted by counties 
shows strongly a tendency of reversion to the old party 
divisions. The plot is almost exactly similar in detail to 
the gubernatorial vote in August, and both bear a close 
resemblance to Whig and Democratic divisions previous to 
1850. The group of counties clustering about Albemarle 
and Pamlico Sounds and covering the eastern end of the 
state from north to south gave Whig majorities as in former 
tacit compacts with the non-slave-holding west. The west 
gave Bell majorities except where the alignment had now 
become permanently broken through special influences. 
The middle east, the east of the slave-holding Democracy, 
was almost solidly arrayed for Breckenridge. Besides con- 
trolling this section across the broadest portion of the state, 
the Democrats now held fast the tier of tobacco-producing 
counties along the Virginia border and the group of cotton- 
producing counties of the west which bordered on South 
Carolina. Both these groups were western according to 
the ancient division, and had been wrested from the Whigs 
only since 1850. 

North Carolinians of all parties were together under a 
common defeat. Yet a calm acceptance of the result and 
acquiescence in the national decision seemed widespread, as 
evinced in the press. ^''^ The situation after the election 
possessed no feature unusual to a presidential contest be- 

"* Comptroller's Report to the Governor, Ellis, Letter-book, p. 311. 
"° Standard, Nov. 7, i860, Raleigh Register, Nov. 14, i860. 



563] Slavery Agitation from 18 jo to i860. 119 

yond a strained expectancy and a dread of the effects of 
the result in less conservative quarters of the Union. The 
conviction undoubtedly prevailed that the necessity for pre- 
serving the Union overbalanced the evils to be apprehended 
from the powers of a president elected on sectional lines/"^ 
They must defend their institutions from encroachments; 
but, at the same time, they felt they must not injure a cause 
capable of the best defences, and admitted to be peril, by 
taking counsel of passion rather than of wisdom. They 
preferred to await the action of the new president, and to 
make resistance to acts only if these should demand it. 
"' Cf. Letter of Wm. A. Graham, Standard, Nov. 14, i860. 



CHAPTER V. 



Secession. 



The theory of the Constitution of the United States as 
a federal compact between sovereign states has, at dif- 
ferent times and under stress of different circumstances, 
held sway over the minds of large masses of the American 
people. The first noteworthy expression of this theory was 
in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and 1799, 
passed as remonstrances against the Alien and Sedition 
Acts. Its second and more serious expression was the 
Hartford Convention held by several of the New England 
states in 1814 for the purpose of redressing their grievances 
arising out of the war of 181 2. The southern states learned 
early the necessity of a strict construction of the Constitu- 
tion, both for economic and institutional protection. Strict 
construction naturally allied itself with the compact theory, 
from which secession follows as a constitutional right. 
The state rights doctrine, passing through several stages 
of development, appeared in its most forceful and con- 
sistent form in 1861. 

Though the right of secession was exercised in 1861 by 
most of the southern states for the protection of slavery, 
the interests of the border-states and of the cotton states 
were neither identical with respect to slavery nor equally 
strong in demanding secession. With regard to the slave- 
holding interest there were divergencies in the border- 
states themselves. Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, 
and Tennessee each, though slave-holding in its larger 
and more fertile sections, contained large mountainous 
areas in which slave labor as a system had never taken root 
and probably never would have taken root. This mountain 
country, with its homogeneous population, all lay contig- 
120 



565] Secession. 121 

uous, making up the western portions of Virginia and 
North CaroHna and the eastern portions of Kentucky and 
Tennessee. This section, only indirectly influenced by 
slavery, never developed the particularistic method of con- 
stitutional interpretation common to the slave-holding sec- 
tions of these four states and to the lower South. 

In North Carolina the western non-slave-holding section 
was the basis of the Whig party. As already pointed out, 
the party gathered to its support not only adherents in 
the east who were not dependent upon the slave interest 
but others also from the ranks of the slave-holders suffi- 
cient to make it the dominant party in the state for the 
fifteen years between 1835 and 1850 when slavery agitation 
was in abeyance. Driven from power by the agitation over 
the compromise measures of 1850, the party disappeared in 
name with its national prototype. In the poorly fitting 
dress of Know Nothingism the Whig spirit lived on through 
the decade, and was ready in i860 to oppose itself to the 
particularistic tendencies of the Democratic party. 

By the eighth of November, i860, it was definitely known 
throughout the country that Mr. Lincoln had been elected 
president. As evinced by the press^ a spirit of acceptance 
of this result and acquiescence in it seemed widespread in 
North Carolina. The appellation " submissionist," applied 
in some Democratic quarters,- had no power of arousing 
resentment in any large mass of the people. William W. 
Holden hastened to announce a policy for the Democratic 
party, though there was much evidence that Governor Ellis' 
faction would not long tolerate his dictation.^ " Let us 
watch and wait," he said ; " North Carolina will never per- 
mit Mr. Lincoln or his party to touch the institution of 
slavery. Her people are a unit on this point. They may 
not advise or approve secession, but they will not submit to 

^Raleigh Register, Nov. 14, i860, Greensboro Patriot, Nov. 15, 
i860, Carolina Watchman, Nov. 12, i860, Fayetteville Observer, Nov. 
12, i860, Standard, Nov. 14, i860. 

^ Wilmington Daily Journal, Nov. 12, i860. 

*Ibid., Nov. IS, i860, Nov. 16, i860. 



122 State Rights in North Carolina. [5^6 

indignities or encroachments."* Business men were advised 
to stand firm and be prepared to resist the threatened panic. 
Economy was insisted upon. The people were especially- 
warned against a panic in the slave-market,^ as this kind of 
property was declared to be in no danger whatever. 

The idea of secession had become familiar in North Caro- 
lina during the agitations over slavery in the past decade, 
though it was still held by the majority as an evil affecting 
their southern neighbors rather than themselves.^ But now 
since an accurate observation of the politics of South Caro- 
lina had, after the election, brought secession as an issue 
closer, the two theories as to the nature of the United States 
government were drawn out in sharper contrast than had 
ever before occurred. William A. Graham and George E. 
Badger, the most prominent representatives of the old Whig 
sentiment of the state, had always held to the national 
theory of the Constitution, and in consequence to revo- 
lution as the only means for redress of grievances. Mr. 
Graham now said : "A state cannot secede, and the necessity 
for revolution does not yet exist. The revolution (for by 
whatever name it be called, this is its effect) should have 
been made earlier, or must be postponed later. . . . Who 
can prepare a declaration of independence, appealing to a 
candid world for its approbation and sympathy, upon the 
ground that we have been outvoted in an election in which 
we took the chances of success, and a candidate has been 
elected who, however obnoxious, we have not deemed un- 
worthy to compete with us for our votes. "^ Mr. Graham's 
position was that of a national rather than a sectional states- 
man, and though his views were out of harmony with the 
tendencies of the South as a whole, they commanded the 
support of a very large portion of the people of his own 
state. The old Whig press emphasized the same view and 

* Standard, Nov. lo, i860. 

" Ibid., Nov. 10, i860. Fayetteville Observer, Dec. 3, i860. 

* Standard, Nov. 14, i860. Letter from Mr. Graham. 
' Standard, Nov. 15, i860. Letter from Mr. Graham. 



567] Secession. 123 

invited argument in refutation.® The Democrats seemed 
to be awaiting- the meeting of the legislature and some 
authoritative expression from Governor Ellis before taking 
a decided course. 

The North Carolina General Assembly, elected in August, 
met in regular session on November 19, i860. The senate 
was composed of thirty-two Democrats and eighteen Whigs, 
a gain by the Whigs of one over their number in the last 
senate. In the house of commons were sixty-five Demo- 
crats and fifty-five Whigs,^ a gain of eight for the latter. 
Organization was efifected by the election of eastern Demo- 
crats as president of the senate and speaker of the house 
respectively. Henry T. Clarke, in assuming his office as 
president of the senate, made a conservative address in which 
he pointed out the seriousness of the political situation and 
the necessity of caution and honesty in interpreting the will 
of the people.^" The legislators seemed fully conscious of 
the importance of the session. The next day Governor 
Ellis sent in his message. ^^ He made four distinct recom- 
mendations upon the subject of federal relations: (i) A 
conference of the southern states; (2) a convention of the 
people; (3) the arming and equipping of the state; (4) 
resistance to federal coercion. The plan of the governor 
as set forth in the document was that the Assembly should 
dispatch delegates at once to a southern conference and 
issue at the same time a call for a state convention to meet 

* "A state cannot secede. It may be asked : What is a state to 
do in the event of Congress passing laws oppressive and intolerable 
to her citizens? We answer at once that she must resort to revolu- 
tion. The right of revolution is one inherent in every people, in 
every form of government; but at the same time it is a right to 
which no people will resort unless the grievances to be redressed 
are more burdensome and intolerable than would be those which 
would flow from a revolution." Greensboro Patriot, Nov. 15, i860. 

* The popular branch of the North Carolina General Assembly was 
called the house of commons until the Constitutional Convention 
of 1868. 

" Report of H. T. Clarke's Speech to the Senate, Raleigh Register, 
Nov. 21, i860. 

" A full report of the governor's message may be found in all 
state papers of the day. See Raleigh Register, Nov. 28, i860. 



124 State Rights in North Carolina. [S^S 

after the conference had done its work. The convention 
was designed to pass upon the work of the conference. 
The message had a ring of activity and radicaHsm that se- 
cured for its recommendations only tardy support. Two 
factions at once clearly defined themselves among the Demo- 
cratic members. One faction, known as the conservatives, 
opposed the proposition for a convention as premature and 
as unwarranted by existing conditions ; they were willing, 
however, that delegates should be sent to a southern con- 
ference. The other faction, known as the radicals, sup- 
ported the whole of the governor's plan. The Whigs op- 
posed both the conference and the convention. Resolutions 
and counter-resolutions were offered as to the attitude the 
state should take, and a test vote was had in the lower house 
on the nature of the federal government. D. D. Ferebee, 
an eastern Whig, oft'ered a resolution embodying the na- 
tional theory and declaring that there could be no such 
thing as secession without revolution.^- Only the Whigs 
voted for it, the conservatives casting their votes with the 
radicals ; this resulted in fifty-four to fifty-eight against 
the motion to print the resolution and refer it to the federal 
relations committee. The state compact theory, entailing 
the right of a state to resume her sovereignty at will, was 
immediately offered by a radical Democrat. A western 
conservative moved an amendment in which the results of 
the election were deplored, but which affirmed the sense of 
the Assembly to be that the rights of the people of the state 
should be observed and enforced in the Union under the 

"Senate and House Journals, 1860-1861, 47. The resolution de- 
clared : " The Constitution of the United States is not a league, 
confederacy or a compact between the several states in their sover- 
eign capacities, but a government proper founded on the adoption 
of the people and creating direct relations between itself and in- 
dividuals; that no state authority has power to dissolve them but 
by revolution, and that consequently there can be no such thing as 
secession without revolution ; that it is the duty of North Carolina 
under all circumstances, and at all hazards to protect, maintain and 
defend in the Union, all her rights under the Constitution ; that the 
election of Lincoln is not a sufficient cause for a dissolution of the 
Union." 



569] Secession. 125 

Constitution, at all hazards and regardless of consequences. 
The resolution with the amendment was accepted by a yea 
and nay vote of sixty-one to fifty-three/^ which accurately 
registered the numerical strength of the two opposing 
theories in this branch of the Assembly. The amendment, 
declaring the absence of sufficient cause for action, secured 
for the resolution the votes of the conservative Democrats, 
who, while believing in the right of secession, opposed its 
exercise. 

The temper of the Assembly was undoubtedly pacific, 
though the situation held possibilities which gave the Whigs 
much uneasiness.^* Should national affairs take such a 
course as to unite the two factions of the state Democracy, 
the Whigs would be in a clear minority. On December 6 a 
memorial of radical character was presented from the 
Southern Rights Association of McDowell County. By 
design this memorial was from the western portion of the 
state and was presented by a western Democrat. It was 
used by the radicals to give color to their claim that the 
stand for the state rights doctrine was not purely that of 
eastern slave-holders. ^° The smouldering fires of eastern 
and western sectionalism were so far from being dead that 
a new state rights paper tactfully declared in its second issue 
that it would eschew all sectional consideration and work 
for the entire state and her common interests.^'' 

A joint committee on federal relations brought in a 
majority and a minority report to the two houses, Decem.ber 
12. The majority report advised the call of a state con- 
vention and the dispatch of delegates to the other southern 

"Senate and House Journals, 1860-1861, 48. 

"Jonathan Worth, a Whig member from the Quaker district, 
wrote to a constituent early in December that the majority of the 
Democrats were for the preservation of the Union, but that they 
would sooner or later go with the radical leaders ; that to his mind 
the Assembly was, beyond doubt, the most unpatriotic body that 
had assembled in North Carolina since the Revolution. This letter, 
written to J. J. Jackson, is in the possession of Mrs. Moffit, Raleigh, 
N. C. 

" State Journal, Dec. 12, i860. 

'" Ibid., Dec. 5, i860. 

9 



126 Secession. [570 

states with a view to securing united action/^ The minor- 
ity opposed both these proposals on the ground of insuffi- 
cient cause, and recommended moderation. ^^ The Whigs 
and conservative Democrats acted together in support of 
the minority. In Heu of the adoption of either report, dis- 
cussion and amendment continued until adjournment for 
the Christmas recess, December 22, two days after the seces- 
sion of South Carolina. Whether the convention would 
be called seemed to be in doubt. A majority of the legis- 
lators showed no disposition to run ahead of the wishes of 
the people. 

The division which defined itself among the Democrats 
in the General Assembly on the reception of the governor's 
message had rapidly taken form throughout the state. Mr. 
Holden, who had formerly divided honors with the governor 
in the leadership of the party, now set himself in the fore- 
front of the conservatives, and with his accustomed editorial 
energy and ability began the fight in the columns of the 
Standard against state rights as interpreted by Governor 
Ellis and the radicals. Only one other prominent Demo- 
cratic leader, ex-Senator Bedford Brown, now a member 
of the General Assembly, stood with Mr. Holden. Never- 
theless, the conservative Democrats held the balance of 
power between the Whigs and the radicals, and Mr. Holden 
received the support of both Whigs and conservatives. 

Mr. Holden charged the governor with the purpose of 
dissolving the Union out of hand at the instance of the 
William L. Yancey school of southern politicians and in 
defiance of the will of the people. ^^ The radicals replied 
by reading him out of their party ranks and repudiating 
the services of his paper, a procedure to which he made no 
objection and one from which he derived benefit for his 
claim that his proscription was due to his support of the 
constitutional Union. Enjoying now a freedom of action 

" Senate and House Journals, Dec. 12, i860. 
"Ibid., Dec. 12, i860. 
'"Standard, Nov. 28, i860. 



57 1] Secession. 127 

the exercise of which had hitherto constantly created dis- 
sensions among his former party associates, Mr. Holden 
attacked the radicals as enemies to the state and nation. 
His opposition was heavily felt by his opponents. A new 
state rights party organ was set up whose first months of 
existence were devoted almost wholly to the defense of the 
governor and the radicals against the onslaughts of Mr. 
Holden.-*' Many saw in the situation the working out of 
class intolerance on the part of the radicals. Mr. Holden 
had never been a slave-holder and was in no way, except 
politically, identified with the slave-holding regime.-^ 

The first distinctively secessionist meeting held in North 
Carolina was a town meeting held in Wilmington Court 
House November 19, i860, the date upon which the General 
Assembly met in Raleigh. Resolutions passed by it, de- 
spairing of the Union, demanded a state convention and 
advised the reassumption of the state's sovereignty. A 
corps of militia was unanimously voted and preparation 
made to arm and equip it."'- A number of eastern and a 
few western counties,-^ following the example of Wilming- 
ton, held similar meetings in the last days of November and 
in December. The disunion party leaders in these meet- 
ings claimed generally that Mr. Breckenridge had been the 
disunion candidate and that secession was contingent upon 
his defeat. The conservative Democrats, who, with the 

^'Cf. State Journal, Nov. 28, i860, Dec. 5, i860, Dec. 12, i860, 
et seq. 

^'The Whigs held that the relation of W. W. Holden to the 
radical Democrats illustrated the proscriptive, intolerant, and aristo- 
cratic character of that party; that the editor aspired to an office of 
distinction in the party and the party manifested its democracy by 
requesting him to leave it; that the offices and honors in the party 
which he had done more than any other man, or ten men, to build 
up and make powerful were not for a mechanic. Fayetteville Ob- 
server, Dec. 3. i860. This was in reference to Mr. Holden's humble 
origin and his ambition for the governorship in 1858 and senatorship 
immediately afterwards. 

-Wilmington Daily Journal, Nov. 20, i860. 

^ State Jour. Extra, Dec. 19, i860, is given over entirely to reports 
of these disunion meetings. The four western counties which held 
meetings of this type thus early were Mecklenburg, Gaston, Lincoln 
and Rowan, all cotton counties. 



128 State Rights in North Carolina. [5/2 

Whigs, were beginning to be called constitutional unionists, 
declared that no such thing was understood ; that if Mr. 
Breckenridge was the disunion candidate, then at least forty 
thousand voters in the state had been deceived ; and further, 
that if Mr. Breckenridge's uttered views had approached in 
radicalism the sentiments contained in Governor Ellis' mes- 
sage, then he would have received in North Carolina not 
even the united support of the present fire-eaters.-* Though 
the state gave Mr. Breckenridge an absolute majority of 
her votes, the fact that now a very large section of the 
Democrats who voted for him were constitutional unionists 
sufficiently refuted the argument that he had been accepted 
by the party as the disunion candidate. Since also the Whigs 
were a unit in their opposition to secession, the radical 
Democrats, in the last months of i860, were a small, though 
a very active, minority. The radical leaders were thor- 
oughly aggressive and acted along lines definitely mapped 
out. Thomas L. Clingman had announced on the floor of 
the United States Senate that the South must not wait for 
overt acts upon the part of the new administration.-' Gov- 
ernor Ellis was the exponent of this view in North Caro- 
lina state politics, though he had not found the temper of 
the legislature to his liking. Yet it was easily discernible 
that external events would be the allies of the radicals. 
That South Carolina would secede before the end of the 
year was generally understood. Her convention had been 
called to meet on December 17; both her Senators had re- 
signed in November, and her federal district court had 
ceased its functions. Governor Gist forwarded to Gover- 
nor Ellis the resolution of his legislature setting aside the 
twenty-first of December as a day of fasting and prayer, 
and invited North Carolina to similar action.-** The radi- 
cals asserted that secession was only a matter of time and 
that the present opportunity must not be lost.-^ 

=" Standard, Dec. 5, i860. 

^ Congressional Globe, 2d sess., 36th Congress, 4. 

'" Ellis, MS. Letter-book, 279. 

" Wilmington Daily Journal, Dec. 5, i860. 



573] Secession. 129 

The unionists were not inactive, though they had a less 
clearly defined policy than the radicals. A constitutional 
union meeting was held in Raleigh November 30, and was 
largely attended by old line Whigs, by Know Nothings, and 
by conservative Democrats. W. W. Holden presented the 
resolution deprecating disunion, and Zebulon B. Vance 
made the chief address. Admitting the right of secession,-^ 
Mr. Vance urged the impossibility of good resulting from 
it and insisted upon a strong stand within the Union. He 
believed that the obnoxious personal liberty laws of the 
northern states would be repealed if southern legislatures 
enacted retaliatory measures touching their trade with the 
South.-" County union meetings were held throughout the 
state during December, all expressing a determination to 
remain in the Union. 

On the fourteenth of December twenty-eight southern 
Senators and Representatives issued from Washington an 
address to their constituents in which they expressed the 
belief that all hope of relief in the Union, through com- 
mittees, congressional legislation, or constitutional amend- 
ment, was extinguished, and declared that the welfare of the 
southern people required the organization of a southern con- 
federacy, a result to be attained only through separate seces- 
sion of the states. Two Representatives from North Caro- 
lina signed the address, — Burton Craige of the seventh and 
Thomas Ruffin of the second congressional district. It was 
understood that Senator Clingman and Representative Wins- 
low were also in accord with the views of the address from 
Washington. ^*^ 

Although not likely to wait upon their encouragement, 
yet it now became important to the lower southern states to 
ascertain the disposition of their northern neighbors toward 

°^ Vance was the only Whig of state prominence at this date who 
admitted secession to be a constitutional means to secure a redress 
of grievances. 

"° Raleigh Register, Dec. 5, i860, has a full report of Vance's 
speech. 

'"Standard, Dec, i860. 



130 State Rights in North Carolina. [574 

secession. Accordingly, delegations were sent to the border 
slave states. North Carolina, on December 18, received 
two commissioners from Alabama, the object of whose 
mission, as communicated by Governor Ellis to the General 
Assembly, was an interchange of opinions on federal rela- 
tions.^^ A more important commissioner was Jacob Thomp- 
son, sent by Mississippi. Though still a member of Presi- 
dent Buchanan's cabinet, Mr. Thompson came to North 
Carolina with the avowed object of using his influence 
toward inducing the state to secede,^- a mission for which 
he was supposed to be better fitted because he was a native 
and former resident of the state and had many warm per- 
sonal friends among the leaders. His letter of credence 
expressed the hope of Mississippi that North Carolina would 
cooperate with her in the adoption of official measures for 
the common defence and safety of the South. There were 
no visible results of the mission ; but Secretary Thompson 
must have gathered sufificient information to convince him 
that the state would make no move unless her position in 
the Union became untenable. 

When South Carolina seceded, December 20, the excite- 
ment attending the first break of the Union was naturally 
communicated to her northern neighbor. In Wilmington 
one hundred guns were fired in honor of the event. Wil- 
mington was the chief town of the eastern slave-holders. 
Its economic organization and geographical situation alike 
allied it in interests and sympathy with the cotton states. 
As the largest town and chief cotton port of North Carolina, 
it was in close touch with Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, 
and New Orleans and reflected a similar public sentiment. 
Only in Wilmington was there any noteworthy demonstra- 
tion of joy at South Carolina's action. The unionists and 

^^ Ellis, Letter-book, 294. 

'" Writings and Speeches of the Hon. T. L. Clingman, 526. Cling- 
man states that Secretary Thompson told him in the middle of 
December that the object of his visit was to induce North Carolina 
to secede. Cf. Von Hoist, Constitutional History of the United 
States, 1859-1861, 367. State Journal, Dec. 26, i860, has a copy of 
this letter. 



575] Secession. 131 

conservatives, a large majority at this date, greeted it as a 
sad event, pregnant with many evils and blasting many fair 
hopes of greatness and glory in the western world.^^ As 
yet North Carolina stood firmly to the bond she had con- 
tracted in 1789. Mr. Holden's often reiterated plea, "Let 
us prepare for any event, but watch and wait," accurately 
expressed the will of the conservative Democrats who, 
believing in the right of secession but looking to it. only as 
a last recourse, firmly held the balance of power between 
the nationalists^^ and the radicals. 

South Carolina's withdrawal from the Union increased 
the vigor of the demands on the part of the radicals for a 
state convention to express the will of the state under the 
new aspect of affairs. Secession, they argued, was now 
an accomplished fact, and North Carolina was forced to its 
approval or disapproval. They hoped for approval. The 
opponents of the convention urged that it would be the 
first step toward disunion and that it would afford dema- 
gogues an opportunity to excite and inflame unduly the 
minds of the people. ^'^ The radicals, constantly under the 
necessity of refuting the charge of being designing poli- 
ticians,^"' urged that a convention was but the ordinary right 
of freemen. A number of conservative leaders now came 
to support the proposition for a convention. W. W. Holden 
had never directly opposed this feature of the governor's 
policy. Mr. Vance, Whig Representative in Congress from 
the mountain district, wrote to a member of the General 
Assembly January 9, 1861, advising a convention. " I do 
not regard," he said, " the call of a convention as a dis- 
union movement, but as the conducting steel to the light- 
ning-freighted cloud. Firm, temperate, and decided action 

^' Fayetteville Observer, Dec. 24, i860. 

^* The term " nationalist " is here used to designate those who 
held the national theory of the Constitution. In general they were 
the old line Whigs, though an increasing number of this party came 
to support secession as the crisis approached, c. g., Z. B. Vance and 
his followers. 

'^Raleigh Register, January 2, 1861. 

^^ State Journal, Jan. 2, 1861. 



132 State Rights in North Carolina. [5/6 

may save the rights of the states and the Union as well. 
Non-action will precipitate us into disunion. A convention, 
while demanding terms of the northern people, can also 
make our voices heard among the southern states whose 
course is rapidly inoculating the people with dogmas which 
we cannot approve."^' Meanwhile, the members of the 
General Assembly reassembled January 7, after two weeks' 
stay among their constituents. It was immediately appar- 
ent that their conservatism had undergone no diminution, 
but that they had become impressed with the fact that many 
besides the radicals wished a convention.^^ 

The convention bill,^" authorizing the election of one 
hundred and twenty delegates on the basis of federal popu- 
lation in the counties, passed both houses January 24. It 
directed that the voters at the same election should express 
their wishes for or against the convention. If a majority 
should vote for a convention, then the governor was di- 
rected to assemble the delegates by proclamation ; if a 
majority should vote against it, then the delegates chosen 
should not be assembled. The date of the election was to 
be fixed by the governor, as also the date of the convention, 
in case a convention were called. February 28 was chosen 
by the governor for the election. North Carolina now 
became a political forge, and it was difficult to determine 
what would be wrought therein. 

An event which had a perceptible effect in hastening the 
convention bill was the seizure of the United States forts, 
Caswell and Johnson. Early in January a report spread at 
the South that the administration at Washington purposed 
to garrison all southern forts ; that troops were already on 

'' Letter of Z. B. Vance to G. N. Folk, Raleigh Register, Jan. 16, 
1861. 

^ Proceedings of the Legislature, Speeches, Raleigh Register, Jan. 
16 and 23, 1861. 

^ Senate Journal, 1860-1861, 206. House Journal, 1860-1861, 374. 
The vote in the senate was 37 for and 9 against the bill; in the 
house, 86 for and 27 against. 



577] Secession. 133 

the way thither.*" Forts Caswell and Johnson commanded 
the mouth of the Cape Fear River below Wilmington, 
consequently great excitement was produced in that town 
at the supposed purpose of the government. On the eighth 
of January a number of citizens, with a portion of the local 
militia, acting without orders, proceeded down the river 
and dispossessed the small garrison in Fort Caswell, Cap- 
tain Thurston of the militia taking command. Fort John- 
son contained no garrison.*^ Two days later Governor 
ElHs directed the Third Brigade commander to require 
Thurston to withdraw the state troops.*- This was done 
on the thirteenth. Governor Ellis then wrote immediately 
to President Buchanan stating the cause of the outbreak 
and requesting a pledge that the forts should not be gar- 
risoned during the present administration. He informed 
the President that the public mind was still excited, and 
that if such assurances were not furnished him he would 
not answer for the consequences.*^ Mr. Holt, secretary of 
war ad interim, replied to Governor Ellis, assuring him 
that it was not the purpose of the administration to gar- 
rison the forts at present ; that the President trusted their 
safety to the law-abiding sentiments of the citizens of North 
Carolina.** The governor, at the request of the house of 
commons, laid the correspondence before the Assembly on 
the seventeenth, and the incident was closed. The state felt 
assured that the Buchanan administration would make no 
hostile move. Fort Macon in Beaufort harbor and the 
federal arsenal at Fayetteville remained undisturbed until 
Mr. Lincoln's call for troops in April. 

Though nothing: in the seizure of the forts could be 



*" Wilmington Daily Journal, Jan. 5, 6, 1861. This report seems 
to have had its origin in Georgia, based on an alarmist telegram 
sent by Senator Toombs from Washington. See Phillips, State 
Rights in Georgia, 201. The report caused a general seizure of 
forts on their coast by all the southern states in January. 

" For an account of the seizure of the forts see Wilmington Daily 
Journal, Jan. 9, 1861. 

"Ellis, MS. Letter-book, 329. 

'' Ibid.. 335. 

" Ibid., 336. 



134 State Rights in North Carolina. [578 

turned to account by either party in the convention cam- 
paign, the convention's supporters were greatly increased 
and strengthened by the progress of events in the cotton 
states and by the action of some of the northern states. 
Mississippi had seceded on the ninth of January ; Florida on 
the tenth ; Alabama on the eleventh ; Georgia on the nine- 
teenth ; Louisiana on the twenty-sixth ; and Texas on the 
first of Febrviary. New York and Ohio passed resolutions 
which defined the attitude of South Carolina as " treason- 
,able " and " insurgent," and offered troops to the President 
for the purpose of her coercion. These resolutions, with 
requests to lay before the legislatures, were transmitted to 
the executives of the other states. Reaching North Caro- 
lina during the convention campaign, they served no pur- 
pose other than to irritate. With a short and caustic com- 
ment Governor Ellis laid them before the General Assembly.*^ 

In the campaign for the convention the secessionists first 
used the term " state rights " to designate their party, main- 
taining that the rights and equality of the states was the 
end to which secession was only the means.*'' Those who 
opposed secession, whether nationalists or conservative 
Democrats, were called unionists throughout the canvass, 
without distinction of former party affiliation. 

Both parties were active in getting candidates in the 
field, and these made the canvass as unionists or disun- 
ionists. The interest of the people was thoroughly aroused. 
After the Assembly had authorized the convention the un- 
ionist leaders who had opposed the movement, together 
with those who favored it, directed their efforts toward 
securing control of its action by the election of a majority 
of the delegates. Among those who became candidates 
were Messrs. Holden and Badger, for the county of Wake.*'^ 

"Ellis, MS. Letter-book, 351, 355. 

*° State Journal, February 13, i860. 

" On the federal basis of population Wake County, containing 
Raleigh, was entitled to three representatives. Quentin Busbee was 
the third unionist candidate. 



579] Secession. 135 

In a joint discussion*^ with his state rights opponent, Feb- 
ruary 14, Mr. Holden denied the right of a state to secede 
from the Union, favored the Crittenden Compromise, and 
asserted that it was the duty of the federal government to 
reinforce and defend Fort Sumter, and that the passage of 
troops across North Carolina for that purpose should not 
be resisted. This speech marked for Mr. Holden a position 
more extreme than that taken by any prominent unionist, 
whether old line Whig or conservative Democrat. All the 
nationalists of the union party were in agreement with him 
on the point of the unconstitutionality of secession, but 
probably none would have submitted to the passage of 
troops across the state. Certainly no leader so expressed 
himself. Their conception of the government would have 
reached its natural objective, revolution, before suffering 
such a disregard of the will of the state. 

The people, fully instructed by press, pulpit, and poli- 
ticians, proceeded to election on the twenty-eighth of Feb- 
ruary. When the result was known the leaders met a 
surprise. The convention had been defeated by a small 
majority,*'' while eighty-five union and thirty-five disunion 
candidates had been elected. ^° The surprise lay in the 
defeat of the convention. All the union leaders had con- 
sented to the convention after the passage of the convention 
bill, and many of them were candidates. All the prominent 

** State Journal, Feb. 20, 1861, has a full report of Mr. Holden's 
speech, with severe criticisms. 
"Ellis, MS. Letter-book, 392, official vote, Feb. 28, 1861, 

No convention 46,603 

convention 46,408 

Majority against convention 195 

Davie County was thrown out on account of some irregularity in 
the returns. With this vote counted as returned the majority against 
the convention was 651. 

'^"This was the division made by the Raleigh Register, unionist. 
The Wilmington Dailj^ Journal, March 13. 1861, taking account of 
differences on the theory of the Constitution, gave the delegates as 
follows: southern rights, 46; conditional submissionists, 22; sub- 
missionists, 52. 



136 State Rights in North Carolina. [580 

union newspapers, with one exception, ^^ favored the con- 
vention. Yet the people, distrusting its possible action, had 
refused its call. They had done this, too, though every 
state south of North Carolina's border was out of the Union 
and a member of the Southern Confederacy. 

The state rights party accepted with ill grace the results 
of this contest. The charge was freely made that foul 
play had been used by the unionists ; that the old Know 
Nothing party lines had been drawn in secret and the con- 
vention, regarded as a Democratic measure, had been slyly 
killed. '^^ This was mainly party chagrin. The real cause 
of the defeat of the convention lay in the fear of the people 
as to what it might do. There had been no lack of defi- 
niteness as to the intention of the state rights party in the 
event that it elected a majority of the delegates and the 
proposition for a convention was carried. Its candidates 
and press repeatedly avowed that the issue at the polls was 
union or disunion. ^^ Thovigh a large majority of the peo- 
ple had trusted to the election of union delegates to secure 
the fulfillment of their wishes, yet a small majority within 
this greater one made sure by the defeat of the convention 
itself. Many unionists voters, however, favored a conven- 
tion to deal with the question which threatened them in the 
Union, and they had so expressed themselves at the polls ; 
therefore, an interpretation of the union sentiment at this 
date must be based on the election of the eighty-five union 
as against the thirty-five disunion delegates rather than on 
the small majority against the convention.^* 

Immediately after the election an incident occurred in 
Raleigh, growing out of the election results, which, though 
within itself of minor significance, caused an acrimonious 

■^The Greensboro Patriot always opposed this convention. 

"State Journal, March 13, 1861. 

"Wilmington Daily Journal, files for Feb., 1861. State Journal, 
files from Feb. 13 to 28, 1861. 

" Bedford Brown testified before the Reconstruction Joint Com- 
mittee of Congress, March 28, 1866, that the vote for union candi- 
dates in this election was in the ratio of 2 to i against disunion. 
Report of Committees, ist sess., 39th Cong., vol. II, 262. 



581] Secession. 137 

discussion between the union and state rights newspapers 
and left men's minds in a heated and irritated condition. 
The unionists in Wake County elected their candidates, 
Messrs. Badger, Busbee, and Holden, by large majorities. 
To celebrate their local and state victory a large and en- 
thusiastic torch-light procession was held in the capital. 
This procession in passing the governor's mansion halted 
and gave vent to groans, presumably in disapprobation of 
that official's radical activity in the cause of secession. 
The state rights party organ magnified the incident into a 
serious indignity put upon Governor Ellis because of his 
righteous effort in behalf of the southern cause.^^ A few 
fights between citizens who held different political views 
increased the tension between the parties and led the editor 
of the State Journal to dub the month succeeding the elec- 
tion the " Reign of Terror."^*' There is no evidence, how- 
ever, that the demonstration in front of the governor's resi- 
dence was a studied indignity. It seems to have been the 
impulse of a moment aroused by thoughtless suggestion. 
As to the month succeeding, the so-called " Reign of Ter- 
ror," it was indicative of the temper of the unionists not to 
yield anything of their moral and material victory over the 
disunionists. 

While the canvass for the convention was in progress in 
North Carolina the Peace Conference met in Washington 
to seek a method of averting the danger that threatened 
the country. Organization was effected February 4 by the 
choice of John Tyler of Virginia as president. North Caro- 
lina's General Assembly had appointed, January 29, two 
commissions, one of five members to the Peace Conference, 
and another of three members to the Southern Convention 
at Montgomery, which also met on February 4, and a few 
days later formed the provisional government of the seceded 
states. The resolutions of appointment were identical in 
language with the exception of the names of commissioners 

"State Journal, March 13, 1861. 
"'Ibid., April 3, 1861. 



138 State Rights in NortJi Carolina. [582 

and conferences. Both declared the object of the commis- 
sion to be " the effecting an honorable and amicable adjust- 
ment of all the difficulties that disturbed the country, upon 
the basis of the Crittenden resolutions, as modified by the 
Legislature of Virginia."^' 

The commission to the Peace Conference was composed 
of three Democrats and two Whigs. The latter were ex- 
Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin and ex-Governor James M. 
Morehead. Of the three Democrats only ex-Governor Reid 
was prominent in state politics. The two Whig members 
entered the conference with a strong desire for harmony 
and for an adjustment whereby the Union might be saved, 
and for this end were prepared to compromise."® 

Seven articles were finally adopted by a majority of the 
twenty-one states represented in the conference. These 
were to be presented to Congress with the hope of their 
endorsement and subsequent submission to the states for 
their ratification as amendments to the Constitution. Only 
two of the articles satisfied the Democratic majority of the 
North Carolina commission and received the vote of the 
state. These were the third and the fourth. The third 
denied the right of Congress to interfere with slavery where 
it already existed or in the territories where it was recog- 
nized, and prohibited forever the foreign slave-trade and 
the domestic trade in the District of Columbia. The fourth 
sanctioned the fugitive slave law and provided payment by 
the federal government in cases where slaves were rescued 
by mobs from the custody of federal marshals. Since the 
people in a state convention would pass finally upon them, 
Messrs. Ruffin and Morehead wished to give the vote of the 
state to the articles as a whole; but the Democratic major- 
ity, considering the five articles a surrender of southern 
rights, refused.^® The Democratic members of the com- 

^' Victor, History of Southern Rebellion, I, 336. 

^* Carolina Watchman. March 9. 1861, has reports of the speeches 
of Messrs. Ruffin and Morehead before the conference. 

°^ Ellis, MS. Letter-book, 384, 385, reports of the commission to 
the governor. 



583] Secession. 139 

mission had never been sanguine of any good resulting from 
the conference. 

During his absence m Washington Mr. Reid was named 
by his native county, Rockingham, as one of its candidates 
for the proposed state convention. His letter of acceptance 
was used for campaign purposes by the state rights party.^° 
It expressed a lack of confidence in any satisfactory results 
issuing from the conference of which he was a member and 
emphasized the futility of its efforts. Admitting that a 
conservative element existed at the North, he pointed out 
that it was too weak to control the actions of the radical 
administration about to be inaugurated ; and therefore, that 
the interests and destiny of North Carolina lay with the 
seceded states."^ Senators Clingman and Bragg also wrote 
on February 18 that nothing favorable was to be expected 
from the Peace Conference. Mr. Clingman warned the 
people that it was the determination of the Republican party 
to subjugate the South and, finally, to abolish slavery in 
the states even at the risk of civil war. He advised resist- 
ance, holding out the hope that, with North Carolina and 
Virginia with the seceded states, the North would hesitate 
to make war.°- 

The Peace Conference adjourned February 24. Its plan, 
adopted by so narrow a margin, went to Congress without 
a compelling moral force. The radicals of neither North 
nor South were pleased. ^Minority members of delegations 
from many of the states whose votes were cast for it were 
strong assailants of its provisions.*'^ The complete failure 
of the plan when it came before the Senate March 4 (con- 
gressional day, March 2) was a severe blow to the union- 
ists' position in North Carolina. From it they had expected 



^ Commissioner Reid to his Constituents, Wilmington Daily 
Journal, Feb. 20, 1861. 

°^ Commissioner Reid to his Constituents, Wilmington Daily 
Journal. Feb. 20. 1861. 

"" Letters of Clingman and Bragg, State Jour., Feb. 20, 1861, Feb. 
27, 1861. 

^ Chittenden, Debates and Proceedings of the Peace Convention, 
440 et s:q. 



140 State Rights in North Carolina. [584 

much,"* and were slow to relinquish their hope.®^ Disap- 
pointed in the conference, they now turned to Lincoln's 
inaugural address as indicative of moderation and peace. ""^ 
a chart by which the border states would find it difficult 
to sail between the northern Scylla and the southern 
Chary bdis. 

The failure of the peace plan was a stimulus to the 
state rights party in the same degree that it was crushing 
to the unionists. Lincoln's address was interpreted as a 
menace rather than a promise of future security.*^' The 
commissioners to Montgomery, occupying seats on the floor 
of the congress, had seen the provisional government of 
the Confederacy take form on the eighth and ninth of Feb- 
ruary. The question " What further need for the unionists' 
shibboleth ' watch and wait ' ?" often repeated by the state 
rights party ,*** was answered with increasing difficulty. 

The Wilmington Daily Journal of March 4 suggested a 
plan of action which became at once the policy of the state 
rights party. This plan contemplated another state con- 
vention. For its call an extra session of the Assembly 
would be necessary. The governor, though well known to 
be favorable, was not likely to call the Assembly together 

°* Samuel Hall, Georgia's commissioner to North Carolina, re- 
porting to the Georgia Convention on the results of his visit to 
North Carolina, February 11, 1861. stated that the belief entertained 
by a large number of North Carolina citizens that the Peace Confer- 
ence would be able to compose the sectional differences prevented 
the state's immediate cooperation with the Southern Confederacy. 
Journal of the Georgia Convention, 343. 

"^ James M. INIorehead wrote on March i that the compromise 
would be effective. Letter in Raleigh Register, March 6, 1861. Rep- 
resentative Gilmer informed his constituents that Congress would 
doubtless adopt the peace plan. Letter of Gilmer, Standard, March 
6, 1861. 

"" Raleigh Register, March 13. i86r. Standard, March 13, 1861. 

"' State Journal, March 13, 1861. 

"^The Wilmington Daily Journal of March 11. 1861, said: "Let 
North Carolina not wait irresolute until it is said she had to be 
kicked out (of the Union), as has been sometimes sneeringly said 
of her. It took two trials to get her into the Union, and much 
talking and explanation. This shows that no action taken in chang- 
ing times can possibly be regarded as unchangeable. It may take 
two trials to get her into the Southern Union. What then? Shall 
we not make them?" 



585] Secession. 141 

for this purpose so soon after the late defeat unless there 
was a strong demand for such action. The Journal's plan 
was to give this demand an effective form. Delegates who 
had been elected to the defeated convention were invited 
to meet as an advisory body of citizens, which, if not a 
legally organized assembly, would at least be composed of 
gentlemen legally chosen, whose views would necessarily 
have much weight, both within and without the state. The 
movement would have to be wholly spontaneous on the part 
of the delegates and at their own expense. Goldsboro was 
suggested as the place of meeting,^^ and April 4 indicated 
as the date. The plan received such hearty endorsement 
from the party that the earlier date of March 22 was fixed 
upon. The course of national affairs still further lent force 
and activity to the state rights party, for besides the failure 
of the peace proposition and the fact that Lincoln's " ad- 
dress " furnished no tangible guarantee for peace and secur- 
ity, David Wilmot was entering the United States Senate, 
and the strongest places in the President's cabinet had been 
filled by Seward and Chase. These three men were looked 
upon as life-long enemies to southern rights. 

The proposal for the Goldsboro convention contained an 
invitation to all delegates of both parties who had been 
elected February 28. As has been seen, more than two- 
thirds of these delegates were unionists. They refused to 
countenance the Goldsboro meeting, and it was denounced 
by the unionist press as illegal and revolutionary.'^'^ With 
only the secession delegates remaining, the convention was 
turned into a mass-meeting wholly secessionist, with the 
secession delegates as a nucleus to give it the character of 
a convention. About twenty-five counties were represented 
during the two days' session, each of these sending as many 
delegates as there were persons willing to go.'^ Some 

'' Raleigh was logically the place for the meeting, but was unionist 
in sentiment, while Goldsboro was strongly secessionist. 

'" Fayetteville Observer, March 18, 1861. 

'^ In Wilmington a number of new delegates were elected March 
20. The proceedings were less regular in other places. Wilming- 
ton Daily Journal, March 20, 1861. 



142 State Rights in North Carolina. [5^6 

near-by counties were represented by several hundred, some 
by fifty, and about half by from one to three delegates."^- 
Most of the twenty-five counties were middle state and 
eastern, the territory represented coinciding roughly with 
the slave-holding area of the state. From Rowan County 
Representative Craige brought the delegation. Holding 
strong state rights views, and a close personal friend of 
Governor Ellis, Mr. Craige's attendance at Goldsboro gave 
the convention official recognition and endorsement. The 
body organized March 22 by the choice of Weldon N. 
Edwards as chairman. The first period of the session was 
given over to a speech from Franklin J. Moses,'^ commis- 
sioner from South Carolina. Mr. Moses referred to the 
natural affinity between North Carolina and the seceded 
states and reminded his hearers of the difficulties which then 
beset them in the old Union and which, he averred, would 
grow constantly worse ; but security, peace, and fraternal 
feeling awaited them in the arms of the southern union. 

The important work of the convention was embodied in 
its favorable action on a set of resolutions brought in on 
the second day by a committee under Mr. Craige. These 
resolutions set forth that the vote taken on the convention 
February 28 was not the deliberate fiat of the people ; that 
subsequent events had brought many into a readiness for 
reconsideration of the state's relations to the Union. There- 
fore, it was recommended that an organization should be 
formed whose object should be the dissemination of the 
facts and the presentation of the arguments bearing upon 
the issue to the people of every county, in the belief that 
when this information was in the minds of the people they 
would demand of the governor and the Assembly an oppor- 
tunity to express their wishes at the ballot-box. In accord- 

"The State Journal, March 27, 1861, contains a list of the dele- 
gations and a full report of the proceedings of this convention. 

" Moses' speech is published in the Wilmington Daily Journal, 
March 25, 1861. This speech, viewed from a calmer distance, cannot 
but appear presumptive and demagogical. He addressed his hearers 
as " fellow-citizens," saying that it was not an inadvertance, as they 
would soon be in the Southern Confederacy. 



587] Secession. I43 

ance with the resokitions two men were appointed in each 
congressional district to make up an executive committee 
of the Southern Rights party for the state.'* It was further 
recommended that the Southern Rights citizens of each 
countv form organizations whose executive offices should 
correspond with the state executive committee and be a 
means for promoting the party principles. A final reso- 
lution declared that the interest and honor of North Caro- 
lina demanded political connection with the Southern Con- 
federacy. 

In the two days' proceedings of this Goldsboro Conven- 
tion is observable an entire absence of any disposition to 
preserve the Union. No word indicated the existence in 
the mind of any person of a hope of the restoration of that 
amity and brotherhood which once existed between the sec- 
tions. No form of compromise likely to be reached offered 
security ; therefore, the party stood ready to carry into prac- 
tice the particularistic theory of the government which had 
never been dead where the state rights party was now 
strongest. Within a week of the adjournment of the con- 
vention the citizens of many state rights counties had organ- 
ized in accordance with the recommendation.'^ 

In changing times a party with a policy to offer secures 
advantage by reason of its readiness and positive program. 
The unanimity of the representatives in the Goldsboro Con- 
vention, their aggressiveness, and the definiteness of their 
plans are in sharp contrast with the confusion that pre- 
vailed among the unionists. Though in a majority, the 
unionists were forced into the attitude of merely an opposi- 
tion party. Only past blessings could be instanced as rea- 
sons for fidelity to the Union. This could not long be a 
very potent argument when the present was so threatening 
and the future unfathomable. The unionists, unable to 

'* The convention adopted the name, " Southern Rights," in lieu 
of state rights, which had been used in the campaign for the con- 
vention. 

'= Wilmington Daily Journal, March 30, 1861. New Hanover 
formed its association March 29, 1861. 



144 State Rights in North Carolina. [588 

offer a solution, could only attack the irregularity of the 
proceedings of the state rights party. The Goldsboro Con- 
vention was bitterly assailed, and Moses was accused of 
trying to induce the leaders to override the will of the peo- 
ple.'® The disunion leaders were reminded that the ballot- 
box was the arbiter of all political controversies in our form 
of government; that the decision had been given on Feb- 
ruary 28, and, until a new contingency arose, should be 
final." 

Freedom of speech and toleration of opposing opinion 
were generally insisted upon throughout March and the 
first two weeks of April, though infractions of the rule 
were occasional on the part of both parties in the respective 
localities where they were in large majorities. '^^ In Wayne, 
a strong secession county, a speaker gave offense by his 
conservatism on the leading question, slavery. A com- 
mittee of ardent secessionists waited upon him and threat- 
ened a coat of tar and feathers as an aid to a change of 
sentiment. ■^^ In Raleigh, on April 8, some young men 
wearing Confederate cockades in their hats raised a small 
Confederate flag on a pole in a vacant lot. The movement 
excited the ire of many of the bystanders, and called forth 
a threat to cut down the pole. Though the threat was not 
executed, one bellicose union man blazed away at the flag 
with a rusty old fire-lock amid the applause of the crowd. ^"^ 
Raleigh, however, stood firmly unionist,^^ despite the atti- 
tude of the governor and of his administration, 

"Carolina Watchman, March 26, 1861. 

"Ibid, April 2, 1861. 

" Early in January Hinton R. Helper's book, " The Impending 
Crisis," brought a number of abolitionists into trouble in Guilford, 
Randolph, and neighboring counties where the Quaker influence 
was very strong. This book was classed under " incendiary litera- 
ture," against the circulation of which a state law existed. 

"Standard, March 20, 1861. 

^"Raleigh Register, April 10, 1861. 

" A train bearing a large number of secession delegates on their 
return from the Goldsboro convention made a stop at the Raleigh 
depot where a large crowd of citizens were collected Sunday morn- 
ing, March 24. The secessionists, fresh from the enthusiasm of 
their meeting, singing " Dixie " and otherwise giving vent to their 



589] Secession. 145 

The Southern Rights party had lost no time in perfecting 
its organization along the lines laid down at Goldsboro, and 
was busily engaged in holding count}' meetings and in 
sending petitions to the governor for a call of the General 
Assembly in extra session. Public opinion was in a forma- 
tive stage. Governor Ellis was not yet prepared, however, 
without further developments, to disregard the people's 
decision, but for this he had not now long to wait. Exter- 
nal events were hastening which would affect North Caro- 
lina and force her to a rapid decision. 

On the twelfth of April Fort Sumter was fired on by 
order of the Confederate government. The next evening 
the garrison surrendered. Lincoln's call for troops fol- 
lowed on the fifteenth, and Governor Ellis needed now only 
to direct the popular impulse. Immediately upon the recep- 
tion on that day of Secretary of War Cameron's telegram 
that two regiments of troops were required of North Caro- 
lina, the governor convened his council, and after a short 
consultation sent the following reply : 

" Your dispatch is received, and, if genuine — which its 
extraordinary character leads me to doubt, — I have to say 
in reply, that I regard the levy of troops made by the Ad- 
ministration, for the purpose of subjugating the States of 
the South, as in violation of the Constitution, and a usurpa- 
tion of power. I can be no party to this wicked violation of 
the Constitution, and to this war upon the liberties of a free 
people. You can get no troops from North Carolina. "*- 

A telesfram from Governor Pickens of South Carolina 



feelings, were incautious enough to yell from the waiting train that 
Raleigh was " a d — d abolition hole," whereupon they were in- 
vited by the citizens to alight and prepare to defend their asser- 
tions. Promptitude was not lacking on the part of the delegates. A 
free-for-all fight was averted only by the timely departure of the 
train. See Standard, April 3, and Raleigh Register, March 27, 1861, 
for accounts of this incident. The Register expressed a fear of 
civil war within the state. 

The Wilmington Daily Journal, March 27, deplored the Union 
sentiment of the capital. 

*' Ellis, MS. Letter-book, 398. 



146 State Rights in North Carolina. [5 90 

also reached Governor Ellis on the fifteenth. It was writ- 
ten at Charleston, and read : 

" Fort Sumter surrendered after our troops had made 
terrible havoc upon it. There is a fleet off our bar with 
several thousand troops on board. If they attempt a land- 
ing, we are prepared for them. We will do our duty. Fort 
Pickens has been reinforced. Will North Carolina stand 
this?"«3 

The telegrams of Secretary Cameron and Governor Pick- 
ens, both received April 15, and representing the appeals 
respectively of the North and the South, left Governor Ellis 
in no uncertain state of mind. On the same day he directed 
Captain Croton to proceed with his company of state troops 
from Goldsboro to Beaufort and to take possession of the 
harbor and of Fort Macon.^* A similar order was given to 
Colonel Cantwell in regard to Forts Caswell and Johnson. 
Both orders were executed by the seventeenth. These 
officers were commanded to observe a peace policy and when 
once in possession of the forts to act only on the defensive. 
On the seventeenth a regiment of militia was ordered to 
Fayetteville to take possession of the United States arsenal, 
then guarded by a company of federal troops. The militia 
commander. Colonel Cooke, was instructed to employ force 
in the event of a refusal by the company to surrender. 
Force, however, was not necessary, the company of regulars 
surrendering at discretion to the two thousand troops de- 
manding it.^^ Brevet Major Anderson, in command of the 
arsenal and troops, resigned his commission under the 
United States government, leaving the command to Lieu- 
tenant D'Lagnel, who by the twenty-seventh had made all 

'' Ellis, MS. Letter-book, 399. 

" Ibid., 400. 

^37,000 muskets and rifles; a complete battery of cannon; a large 
quantity of powder, with other military stores, were surrendered. 
See Fayetteville Observer, April 29, 1861. 

President Jefferson Davis gives the number of muskets and rifles 
taken at Fayetteville as 27,000. These were probably all that were 
serviceable. See The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Govern- 
ment, vol. I, 471. 



5 9 ^^'^ cssio n. 147 

necessary preparations for sending his company down the 
river to Wilmington and thence to New York. The inhabi- 
tants of Fayetteville offered every courtesy and facihty to 
the heutenant, and on the twenty-seventh the company took 
steamer without any unpleasant incident marring the depar- 
ture. The United States mint at Charlotte had been taken 
over on the twenty-second. A military inspector for the 
state was appointed and empowered by the governor to ex- 
ercise all powers necessary for the public defense, to extin- 
guish lights and to seize vessels belonging to the enemy.^*' 
Five thousand volunteers tendered their services to the gov- 
ernor before the call for thirty thousand on the twentieth. 
A military encampment was established at Raleigh, where 
the work of drilling the state troops and the volunteers went 
rapidly forward. Large sums of money were subscribed by 
private individuals to assist in equipping the troops.®^ 
Nominally, North Carolina was to remain a month longer 
in the Union ; in reality, she was out of it the day after 
Secretary Cameron's telegram for troops was received. 

By proclamation on April 17 Governor Ellis had called 
the members of the General Assembly to meet in extra ses- 
sion on the first day of May. The proclamation closed with 
the words : " United action in defence of the sovereignty 
of North Carolina and the rights of the South becomes now 
theduty of all."®^ The Virginia legislature on the same day 
passed its ordinance of secession, subject to ratification by 
a vote of the people. On the twenty-fifth it ratified the 
constitution of the Provisional Government of the Confed- 
erate States of America, at the same time entering into a 
convention by which all Virginia's forces, forts, and military 
equipment were placed at the disposal of the Confederate 
government.*'' The secession of Virginia went far toward 



'"Ellis. MS. Letter-book, 413. Ellis to Inspector Whitney. 
"Raleigh Register, April 24, i86r. 

''This proclamation may be found in all the state papers of date. 
'Stephens, War Between the States, vol. II, 378. Journal of 
Virginia Convention, 1861, 196. 



148 State Rights in North Carolina. [592 

stilling the voices in North Carolina that seemed yet in- 
clined to be raised for the government of the fathers.'''^ 

After the call of Mr. Lincoln for troops, resistance, 
whether it be termed secession or rebellion, became the 
overwhelmingly prevailing sentiment in North Carolina. 
Differences on the theory of the Constitution were for the 
moment hushed in the din of preparation for battle. Abridg- 
ment of party differences for a common purpose, rather 
than a surrender of principles on either side, secured unity 
of action. Mr. Graham admitted early in May that the 
time was ripe for revolution."^ Mr. Badger expressed sim- 
ilar views but favored a central confederacy as the object 
of revolution."- Mr. Holden was less committal ; he drifted 
with the tide, deprecating at the same time the supremacy 
of northern and southern extremists. The unionist press 
with unanimity now admitted separation to be inevitable."^ 

Governor Ellis met the General Assembly on May first with 
an ably written message in which he labored to convert 
those who did not believe in the constitutional right of 
secession. He reviewed the whole theory of government 
upon which the Constitution was founded."* The southern 
position of state sovereignty was clearly defined, as set forth 
by the framers of the constitutional compact. Assuming 

^'The Greensboro Patriot was the last reputable journal in the 
state to advocate separation. 

"^ William A. Graham's speech at Hillsboro, Standard, ]\Iay 15, 
1861. 

'^Letter of Mr. Badger, Raleigh Register, May loth, 1861. 

"'The Fayetteville Observer lost hope April 15. With stubborn- 
ness and reluctance it came to support a separatist policy and inde- 
pendence of the state, free of North or South. It blamed " the 
efforts of a stupid and treacherous administration on the one hand 
and the malcontent fire-eaters on the other " for " the guilt and 
folly of destroying the best government on earth." Observer, April 
IS, 1861. 

The Carolina Watchman, the focus of Whig sentiment in the 
west, came over without any reservations. April 23 it said : " Pres- 
ident Lincoln's proclamation and call for volunteers to coerce the 
seceding states has, for the time being, settled every political dif- 
ference between the people of this section. If he had spent a whole 
year in devising a method to unite the southern people he could 
not have brought out anything more successful." 

^ Message, Ellis, MS. Letter-book, 409, et seq. 



593] Secession. 149 

that the state would secede and join the Confederacy, he 
recommended a convention of the people as the only method 
by which secession could constitutionally be accomplished. 
The convention, he said, should be unlimited because of the 
need in strenuous times of resorting to a tribunal for de- 
cisions ; the action of the convention should be final because 
of the importance of a speedy separation from the northern 
government. The message further showed what action had 
been taken to place the state in an attitude of offensive and 
defensive warfare and recommended a large appropriation 
for arsenals and the manufacture of arms. 

The Assembly took swift action on the convention bill,^^ 
carrying it through all its readings and to its final passage 
on the first day of the session. The bill provided for a 
convention, unrestricted in powers and final in action, to 
be composed of one hundred and twenty delegates elected 
on the federal basis of population in the counties. The 
election should be held on the thirteenth and the convention 
meet on the twentieth. So rapidly did legislative machinery 
move that the governor was able to issue his election proc- 
lamation on the same day that he had sent in his message 
recommending the convention. Other important recom- 
mendations, in a special message from the governor, were 
speedily embodied in legislative enactments. The governor 
was authorized to tender to Virginia the services of North 
Carolina troops not immediately wanted for coast defence."'^ 
Five hundred thousand dollars were placed at his disposal 
in addition to the amomit appropriated by the regular ses- 
sion for arming the state."' A bill was passed authorizing 
counties to make subscriptions for the purpose of arming 
and equipping volunteers.''® The statute requiring state 
officers to take an oath to support the Constitution of the 
United States was repealed.''" The Democratic program of 

^''Journal of N. C. General Assembly, extra session. May i, 1861. 

"^ Resolution passed May i, 1861. 

°^ Journal N. C. Gen. Assembly, extra session, May 2, 1861. 

'^Ibid., same date. 

'° Ibid., May 3, 1861. 



150 State Rights in North Carolina. [594 

preparation encountered no opposition. The constitutional 
union Democrats, now that they considered the Constitution 
definitely broken by the aggression of the North, had gone 
over in a body to the side of their secession brethren. The 
nationalists, ready for revolution, aided in the prepara- 
tions.^"*^ 

In the twelve days intervening between the call for the 
convention and the election of delegates there was little 
time for an alignment of parties. The only point of differ- 
ence was whether separation should take the form and title 
of revolution or of secession. This would depend upon 
whether the convention was controlled by those who held 
the national theory of the Constitution or by those who held 
the compact theory. In most of the counties party lines 
were obscured to such an extent that there is no method of 
marking the division of sentiment except by the subsequent 
voting of their delegates in the convention. In many coun- 
ties the old alignment continued. ^°^ Those who had been 
candidates as unionists in February now became candidates 
as revolutionists, but with much less hope of election over 
their secession opponents. 

The convention assembled May 20, with unrestricted 
powers but under implied instructions to separate from the 
federal Union. Of the one hundred and twenty delegates 
elected the whole number were soon in attendance. That 
the people of the state realized the gravity of the situation is 
attested by the character of the convention. Sixty-seven of 
the delegates had had the advantage, either in whole or in 
part, of a collegiate education. Of the remaining fifty- 
three, sixteen were physicians who had taken professional 
courses.^"- From the list of delegates the only names of 

^™Jour. N. C Gen. Ass., ex. sess., May 3, 1861. Their votes were 
recorded in the affirmative on each of the foregoing measures. 

"' Messrs. Geo. E. Badger, W. W. Holden, and K. P. BaUle were 
reelected in Watce after a close contest with Thomas Bragg, 
Charles Manly and G. W. Mordecai. 

"" McCormick, J. G. Personality of the Convention of 1861, pub- 
lished in James Sprunt Historical Monographs. 

Mr. McCormick's monograph was prepared under the personal 
supervision of Prof. K. P. Battle of the Dept. of Hist, in the Univ. 
of N. C. Prof. Battle was a member of the convention. 



595] Secession. 151 

political prominence that were absent were those of Z. B. 
Vance, James M. Morehead and Willie P. Mangum, of the 
Whigs, and Senators Clingman and Bragg, Charles Manly 
and Moses A. Bledsoe, of the Democrats. The absence of 
these leaders was due in large part to the comparatively 
small total number of the convention, together with the con- 
flicting claims upon the suffrages of the people of candidates 
in the same county. 

The convention chose Weldon N. Edwards as chairman 
over Wm. A. Graham, by a vote of sixty-five to forty-eight. 
Mr. Edwards had been chairman of the self-constituted 
Goldsboro Convention. Mr. Graham was the candidate of 
the revolutionists. Immediately after organization Mr. 
Badger offered his ordinance of separation, based on the 
right of revolution. This document^^^ is remarkable for the 
evenness of its tone and for the vividness with which it por- 
trayed the past and present political conditions of the state. 
The long preamble recited the grievances of North Caro- 
lina, her efforts to remain in the Union and her reasons 
for the same, and finally, the climax of her grievances in 
Lincoln's proclamation and call for troops. Then followed 
the ordinance declaring North Carolina free and indepen- 
dent. All reference to secession as a legal right was care- 
fully avoided by Mr. Badger. Before the vote was taken 
Mr. Craige, the floor leader of the secessionists, offered an 
ordinance and moved it as a substitute for that of Mr. 
Badger. Mr. Craige's ordinance,"* based on the constitu- 
tional right of a state to withdraw from the Union at will, 
simply abrogated and rescinded the ordinance of the state 
convention which ratified the Constitution of the United 
States in 1789.^**^ The two ordinances, representing re- 

^"^ Journal of the North Carolina Convention of 1861, 10, il. 

"''Journal of the North CaroHna Convention of 1861, 16. 

"° The secession ordinance introduced by Mr. Craige and by 
which North CaroHna withdrew from the Union was written by 
Judah P. Benjamin of President Davis' cabinet, and sent by a special 
messenger, Mr. James M. Hines, to Governor Ellis at Salisbury. 
Governor Ellis charged Mr. Craige with its introduction in the con- 
vention. The object of the Confederate government was to secure 



152 State Rights in North Carolina. [59^ 

spectively the national and the compact theor_v of the gov- 
ernment, were now before the convention for a decision. 
The debate was short, carefully pruned on both sides of 
all hostility, and reduced practically to explanations of the 
respective positions of the supporters of the ordinances. ^^"^ 
The vote resulted in seventy-two for and forty against sub- 
stitution,^"" this being the test vote. The revolutionists were 
outnumbered by thirty-two. Among those who voted against 
the substitution were Messrs. Gilmer, Graham, Battle, Fere- 
bee, Badger, Dick and Holden, all life-long Whigs except 
the two last named, who were both recent acquisitions. 

Immediately after the test vote, the vote on the passage 
of the substituted ordinance was taken and resulted in a 
unanimity of ayes.^°^ The revolutionists deemed it unwise 
to weaken the attitude of the state at such a period by a 
continued division over a question of constitutional inter- 
pretation. Within an hour after the passage of the seces- 
sion ordinance a second ordinance was introduced and 
passed ratifying the Provisional Constitution of the Con- 
federate States of America. Thus the citizens of North 
Carolina had been under three dififerent governments within 
the space of as many hours. The state had been the last 
of the southern states to enter the Union and the last to 
withdraw. 

The record of the yeas and nays upon the substitution of 
the ordinance of secession for the ordinance of revolution 

uniformity in the method by which the border states should with- 
draw. Mr. Hines, the Confederate messenger, is now Hving in 
St. Louis, Mo. 

"" One Union-loving mountain delegate had no patience with the 
temper of the convention. Exasperated at the secessionists' constant 
reference to the example of South Carolina, he rose to his feet. 
Towering in height, with long arms gesticulating, indignant in mien, 
and in language more eloquent than grammatical or chaste, he ex- 
claimed : " Let South Carolina nullify, revolute, secess, and be 
damned! North Carolina don't have to follow her lead!" Personal 
reminiscence of a member. 

^" Journal of the Convention, 16. 

"* Journal of the Convention, 16. One hundred and fifteen, all the 
delegates in the hall, voted for the ordinance. The remaining five 
had their votes recorded for it the following day. 



597] Secession. i53 

enables the vote of each delegate to be traced to the county 
which he represented. Making large allowance for the in- 
fluence of popular leaders, the expected fact is disclosed 
that the constituencies of delegates who voted for revolu- 
tion occupied the strongholds of the old Whig party, and 
that these strongholds were, in turn, coincident with the 
territory : first, where slavery as an economic institution did 
not exist, as in the mountain country ; second, where the 
staple crops were not grown and slavery was consequently 
a weak economic factor, as in portions of the Piedmont 
country ; third, where the Quakers were dominant, as in 
Guilford, Randolph, and Chatham Counties ; and fourth, 
where a large poor white population inimical to slavery ex- 
isted, as in the poorer eastern coast and swamp counties. 



CONCLUSIONS. 

From the foregoing study the writer feels that the follow- 
ing conclusions may be justly drawn : 

1. That North Carolina entered the federal Union in 
the belief that the act by which she ratified the Constitution 
did not divest her of sovereignty. The theory obtained that 
sovereignty was divisible and that the federal government 
was the agent of the federated states, empowered to exer- 
cise their sovereign powers to the extent granted by the 
constitutional compact. 

2. That the slight jealousy manifested for state sover- 
eignty by North Carolina during the first fifty years of 
union was due, not to a change of theory, but to a growing 
sense of appreciation of the benefits derived from the work 
of the agent, a government which should be loyally sup- 
ported as long as its controlling principle was a just pres- 
ervation of the line of demarcation between the powers 
delegated to it and those retained by the states. 

3. That during the Whig regime in the state from 1835 
to 1850 the first indications appeared of the growth of a 
true national spirit. This spirit, though weak in its first 
years of existence and confined to the portion of the state 
which was less influenced by slavery, really interpreted the 
Constitution as having created, not a federal compact of 
sovereign states, but an indissoluble national unity. 

4. That though this spirit of nationalism grew apace 
under pressure of fear for the Union, aroused by the 
slavery agitation from 1850 to i860, it never became strong 
enough to successfully combat the state rights forces, which 
were united in defence both of slavery and of the principle 
upon which they conceived the Union to be founded. 

154 



599] Secession. 155 

5. That a majority even of those who beHeved in the com- 
pact theory went out of the Union in 1861 reluctantly, under 
pressure of rushing events, influenced by a common interest 
with the slave states, and in the belief that secession, though 
now inevitable, was too hastily adopted as a remedy for the 
grievances of the South. 



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